The Living Wife
by MlleBree
Summary: A scorpion and a grasshopper. A choice. One moment in time can change the course of life. Can Christine learn to love? Can Erik learn empathy? Can either of them ever forgive themselves or each other? Tuesday/Thursday.
1. What's the point of happiness?

Her fingers trembled on the little brass figurine, the blood that was rushing through her ears drowning out every other sound that assaulted her. She could no longer hear his crazed ranting - nor the cries from beyond the thin walls of his forest. The only thing she could hear was her own pulse - the only thing she could feel was the iciness of the figurine that rested so innocuously beneath the tips of her fingers.

Her head no longer hurt. She was sure it would later but not now, not with the thoughts that had suddenly flown from her head. No, at the moment she was quite numb.

"The grasshopper, be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!"

How she hated him in that moment; the way he always seemed to speak in riddles, the tricks he had played on her. The fact that she was no longer sure which would actually grant her a quick death - the scorpion or the grasshopper.

A quick death. Both would grant her a death - how could she think otherwise? One would grant immediate death, the other a slow death buried in a tomb.

Was it so terrible though?

How long she had battled with this - the sensibilities that told her to run, to run fast and far, and the last bit of her very soul that seemed unwilling to allow her escape.

Could she truly hate him so much? So much to wish death upon them all to escape him?

How long had she laid awake over the last few months, only wishing that the decision would be made for her? And here he was, making it for her. He knew her. He knew her so well. He knew her selflessness, that she would never allow another to suffer for her. That maybe, even if she did say it, she had never truly hated him. That she was incapable of hating him.

How broken was she?

How broken was he?

Maybe brokenness was all there was for her.

She dared to allow her glance to fall upon him - only once, and so briefly. His twisted face, his thin frame, his long graceful fingers; and his eyes, those deep set eyes that were hardly visible. Those eyes that held such sadness, such torment, such loneliness. And still, even now, just the briefest hint of hope.

She looked back down and quickly jerked her hand away from the grasshopper. How could she? Could she ever forgive herself for dimming that last bit of hope that he dared allow himself? Could she let herself destroy what little remained of his already broken soul?

How long had he labored alone, how many nights had he spent tormented by silent, hidden demons? She knew her own nightmares. How many nights had he stood by, willing to sing her to sleep, willing to take the pain away? And how many of those nights were spent sleeplessly for him? How many times had she dared to probe past what she saw on his surface, past the illusions that he had created for her?

How long had he worked to sculpt her voice, to hand her dreams to her? To give her as much of the world as he possibly could? The only little bit of it that he possessed. To bring her so close, allow her liberties that he had never allowed anyone. To welcome her into his home despite the danger, despite the years that had shown him the depth of the world's cruelty. 

Could she hate a man she hardly knew? Could she hate a man for loving her in the only way he knew? Could she hate a man for cutting out his very soul and laying it at her feet?

And with a deep breath and only half a thought she turned the scorpion.

There was a long moment of silence - silence that seemed to drag, dip and consolidate. The air was thick and for a moment she was almost afraid that she had turned the wrong figurine - that perhaps this was his plan, that they would suffocate.

When she managed to draw in a breath the world spun back into view, sounds and feelings rushing back to her in an overwhelming crescendo.

Her head hurt - it ached so terribly that it pulled her to her knees. She did all she could - clutching it between her hands and giving a half hearted attempt to stem her tears.

But that's all there was; pain. There was no regret, no sadness. Not in that moment. There was no overwhelming anxiousness, no, only the throbbing ache of her head and the sound of his sobs.

When had he begun to cry?

She wasn't quite sure, but cry he did, slithering toward her on his own knees. That terrible face was drawing nearer and nearer still to her, tears falling from the void where she knew his eyes resided - those eyes that she couldn't quite make out in the flickering candlelight.

It was a dreadful sight, but she no longer felt the dumb horror that it had inspired before.

If one were to question her sanity they would need only to hear her one thought to know that they were justified: 'How can one sniffle with no nose?'

Her sanity was not her concern in the moment that seemed to pass like a fleeting breeze, that long moment suspended in time as he wailed, steadily crawling toward her.

She stared into his face, beginning to alter it in her mind's eye. There was a nose, there. A strong, sturdy nose. And his eyes - well, his eyes would be amber. It seemed the only natural solution to the odd yellow-glow they held now. His chin would be strong, with normal, bushy eyebrows. Yes. And maybe, in her head, he could be handsome, if only she imagined it hard enough.

But she blinked once, only once, and the image was gone, replaced with the stark reality of sunken eyes, thin, translucent skin that displayed his web of thin blue veins; dry, cracking lips. And no nose, only two little holes that served as nostrils. A snake, that seemed the most apt thing to compare him to.

A very sad snake.

"Christine," and his voice cracked on her name, weak and wavering.

"Erik," she replied flatly, dead. Just as she felt.

He made an attempt to compose himself - she would credit him with that, but he only seemed to fall apart again before he could ever manage it.

"Christine," he said again, his voice rough and dry. "You - Christine turned the scorpion."

"I turned the scorpion," she echoed weakly.

"And, and Christine will stay. She promised - she knew, and she promised to stay."

She pressed two fingers to the scrape on her scalp. It had scabbed, blood no longer flowing from the crack in her skin.

"I will stay," she didn't have the energy left to fight - not any longer. She wanted to close her eyes, drift off to sleep. She was so incredibly tired, so exhausted. What was left to fight for? She had fought so long and so valiantly and still, she couldn't find herself quite disappointed with her loss. "I promised, and I will stay."

When he reached for her she did not flinch, she did not pull away. Instead she sat, perfectly still, not even a twitch of a muscle. Even her breath was still.

When his hand fell limply to his side without ever brushing her skin the breath she held seemed to release itself involuntarily.

"I promised to be your wife," she breathed at his prolonged silence, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes in an attempt to hide the betraying tears. "And you promised to let them go," she said, confidence finding its way through the tremble of her voice. She tore her hands away from her eyes. "You promised - you have to save them Erik. I promised to be your wife, and you promised if I was your wife you would let them go."

"Your fiancé." His voice had found a steady place at last, his tone flat and cold. "What use does Christine have for a fiancé if she has a husband?"

She took a deep breath. Her eyes closed for a moment and she steeled her nerves as she counted her choices. He stared at her curiously and when her hand moved toward him he jerked himself just out of her reach, flinching away from her as though she had swung a closed fist at him.

"Erik," she whispered, afraid that if she spoke any louder the quake of her voice would betray her fraying nerves. "Please." When she reached for him again he sat still as a statue. Her trembling fingers closed around his hand, the cold of his skin seemed to bite her through his leather glove but she did her best to stay calm. "I promised to be your wife," her whisper came. "I will be your wife but if you - if you kill him, if you break your promise to me then I will not keep mine. I - I'll kill myself, Erik. I swear it."

"Erik would never allow that to happen," he said flatly.

She bit her lip, finally giving in to the tears that had gathered in her own eyes. "I'll starve myself, I don't care. You cannot force me to eat, I -" and she took to his own method, pressing the back of his unnaturally cold hand to her cheek. "Please, Erik," she begged, peeking up at him as humbly as she could manage. "I will - I'll be a good wife to you Erik. I will be a - a living wife. Your living wife, if only you keep your word. I swear it - please."

His shoulders shook with his breath and he tore his hand from her grip, cradling his fingers as though her touch had caused some physical injury.

"Christine needs rest," he said. "That is all - a good nights sleep and a hearty breakfast and - and Christine will be well."

"Erik -"

He held his hand up. "Erik will keep his promise. He does not break promises."

"You won't let them die," she breathed.

"Erik will save them, but Christine must rest."

When he caught her elbow and roughly pulled her to her feet she made no argument, even as he walked her to the doorway of her bedchamber.

"Christine will rest," he said, "and Erik will keep his promise."

"I'll rest," she agreed softly. He nodded, flicking his fingers impatiently through the doorway. He stood there and watched her until the door clicked closed behind her.

She stripped herself down to her chemise and climbed into the bed that had once seemed so safe, the bed that had once seemed to be a second home to her. Now it was nothing more than a prison, the odd home she had been fascinated by instead lending to a suffocation that caused a nervous dizziness in her.

She closed her eyes, trying to breathe through the sobs that had taken her, trying so hard not to allow the oppressive silence of the home to close in on her.

She must have fallen asleep at some point. She realized this when she was started awake at the feeling of the mattress sinking beneath Erik's weight.

"It is done," he said sadly, sitting just on the edge of the bed.

"They're safe?" She breathed through her dry throat.

"They are alive," he said quietly. "Your boy - I assume that is who you are asking about, not Erik's friend who risked his life for you. Perhaps only more foolishly as he knows what Erik is capable of. Your boy swallowed a lot of water. He will be confused and weak for a time, but he will live. And - and Erik's friend that Christine cares nothing for will be fine," he said flatly. "He will - he will never forgive Erik, but he will be fine. He has a very loyal servant who will see to his recovery."

"Water?" She asked.

"The scorpion," he said as way of explanation. "The grasshopper, it would have - ah, there was quite a bit of gunpowder. The scorpion, though, the scorpion was a tap. It is all drowned - the gunpowder, your boy, Erik's friend."

"But they are safe," she breathed.

"They are alive," he corrected her.

"And you let them go."

"They are alive," he repeated stubbornly.

"Erik, you promised me -"

"Erik promised that no one would die," he said firmly. "Erik promised that your boy would continue to draw breath and his wretched heart would continue to beat. Erik will keep that promise, just as Christine will keep hers."

She bit her lip, grateful for the darkness of the room. "Where is he?"

"Safe and alive," Erik said sadly.

She nodded, trying not to flinch away when his cold fingers brushed against her temple. He had removed his gloves and there was an extra chill to his touch.

"Erik?" She asked quietly.

"Yes Christine?" He sounded calm now.

"I will - I'll be your wife. But no more blood. Please," her voice cracked on the words. She would have cried but she suspected her tears had run dry.

He was quiet for a long moment. "No more blood," he agreed softly.

She nodded and let her head fall back to her pillow. When he began to sing, his voice warm and gentle, she allowed her eyes to drift closed. His song wrapped around her like the warmth of a blanket and finally, giving in to her exhaustion, she slept.


	2. This is your very own love

A sweet smell permeated the air, something that seemed so out of place in the dungeon that was Erik's home. But it was there, the smell of baking, and it was the odd smell that woke her.

She groaned as she stretched, rather wishing that the far-too-soft mattress would open up and swallow her. Such was not her luck, though. She was young and healthy and despite her threats to Erik only the night before she knew that she was fully incapable of suicide - it was an unforgivable sin. Regardless of her struggle, of the horrors she would be forced to endure at his hands the hope of one day seeing her father again held her resolve. She wouldn't let anyone take that from her, even Erik could not take that hope, perhaps one of the only things he couldn't take from her.

As it was she continued to draw breath, and so long as she did she supposed she had no choice but to face him. Her legs had already begun to grow stiff and she was restless, the darkness in the bedroom seeming to close in around her. And so she rose, carefully lighting the little oil lamp that sat on the dresser.

It didn't offer much to her exhausted eyes. The flickering light simply caused odd shadows to be cast around the now-eerie room. Nonetheless she forced herself to dress, stepping carefully around the wedding dress that laid in a crumpled heap on the stone floor. It could stay there for all she cared - she had no desire to ever touch it again. The shimmering white satin and careful beading would have been beautiful, delightful even, but it seemed nothing more than a mockery now, the pure white of an innocence that no longer seemed to exist. It taunted her, a reminder of what may have been had this been another life, another man, another girl. There was nothing pleasant to be had from the pretty white dress.

Instead she found herself slipping into a long gray dress, something more akin to a day dress than a gown. It was one of the few simple dresses she had here - Erik enjoyed opulence and it was something that he seemed determined to pass to her as well. She was a simple girl at heart though. She enjoyed her simple clothing, the plain ribbons that she used to tie her hair back. She had never been quite comfortable in luxury - an odd thought, in retrospect, as she had accepted the proposal of a Viscomte. And were he not tucked away in some dark crevice, unfairly sucked into the melodrama that she had somehow created, she would be a Viscomtess.

Instead she found herself sucked into the depths of Hell, chained to a demon in order to appease some sin that she didn't quite understand.

She didn't bother tying her hair, she didn't even bother brushing it. Instead she pulled on what seemed to be a matching pair of stockings and slipped her feet into her soft slippers.

Was it odd that the slippers caused a feeling of nostalgia in her? They had been a gift from Erik after all, and at this moment she did not hold too many warm feelings for the man. He had seemed so different then, though. It had still been her first week of knowing him as a man when he had bestowed them upon her, nervously shifting from foot-to-foot and avoiding looking into her eyes. Despite his terrifying mask he had seemed a nervous child, hardly a threat to anyone. She even clearly remembered wondering how this childish, nervous man could pose a threat.

How wrong she had been.

She had defended him though. She had been the one to insist that he was simply a misguided man, nothing to be terrified of. She had even gone so far as to scold the ballet girls for their gossip, denying his existence. There were rumors, of course. She wasn't quite naive enough to miss them - she had heard the whispers; the Phantom's whore, the Phantom's lover. They made her burn with shame but she had ignored them as thoroughly as she could.

Now she knew just how naive she had been. All of the warnings had been there of course, but she was a sweet girl at heart. She couldn't bear the thought of running - of abandoning him without a word. It would have been cruel, unnecessarily cruel she had thought at the time. She realized now, only as it was too late, that she should have taken Raoul's invitation, should have let him carry her off to some far-away place. Let him hide her. But it was too late now - she was here now, a victim to her her own far-too-tender heart.

She had always considered her empathy to be one of her better traits - now she wondered if that was simply naivety too.

She found him in the kitchen - exactly where she had expected to find him with the smell that permeated his strange home. His back was turned to her as he worked at the wood burning stove. He didn't even glance toward her when she walked into the room.

"How did you sleep?"

His question made her jump - she had been quiet and he hardly gave any indication that he had known she was there.

"Well enough, thank you," she said, biting back the tears that threatened to spill.

He finally turned his head to her, his unnerving yellow eyes examining her closely from behind his thankfully replaced mask. "You are lying," he observed quietly, then he shook his head. "It is no matter. Sit, please, breakfast is nearly ready now."

She obeyed his command, sliding cautiously into one of the four chairs that sat around his little kitchen table. It was an odd thing - she had always wondered about his need for so many seats in his home. Four around the table in the kitchen, six around his far-too-large dining room table. The thought of Erik ever hosting a dinner party was laughable at best but she had never dared to question it, never quite sure what would trigger a flare in his temper.

"It smells very good," she said, taking the opportunity of his turned back to wipe away the tears that she could manage to reach.

He hummed in the back of his throat - his only acknowledgment of her statement - and pulled open the door of the oven, gazing inside of it.

She bit her lip, wondering what to read into his obstinate silence. Was he angry today? Was he happy? There was never really a way to tell with Erik until his temper had flared, at which point it was far too late to bother questioning it. So instead of pushing the issue she crossed her hands on the table, staring at her nails and ignoring him just as thoroughly as he ignored her.

His approach was always a silent one and she jumped when he slipped a plate in front of her, her hand reflexively pulling away from the unexpected intrusion into her space.

"You are anxious today," he observed, that same careful gaze fixed on her. How she hated that gaze! How she hated the way that he could read her so easily.

"I'm sorry," she said, not bothering to come up with an excuse. There was no use in excuses - not with Erik. He could read through her lies far too easily. If only she didn't lie then perhaps he could not be so terribly angry with her.

He sat a plate of pastries on the table, each one filled carefully with a mixture of strawberries and blueberries and expertly drizzled with cream. Erik was never a man that did half a job - everything he did was done to perfection, even the presentation of his food. The pastries looked as if he had simply reached into a painting and pulled them out.

Sometimes it infuriated her - how could he do everything he put his hand to so well? Other times it made her feel inferior. How could she ever live up to his standards? How could she ever reach the perfection that he so desired in every facet of life? That was a lot of pressure to put on one person and though he had never demanded perfection from her in anything but her voice she now had to wonder how that would change.

Surely a man so fixated on perfection and beauty would expect nothing less of his wife.

"You've no reason to be," he said, taking his customary seat across from her and crossing his hands beneath his chin. "Please, eat."

She looked at him for a long moment before she finally reached across the table and pulled one of the pastries to her plate. It was another long moment of silence before she dared to take a bite, finding that her stomach churned with her anxiety.

"It's very good, Erik," she said after she managed to force herself to swallow her first bite. "Thank you."

His gaze was so unnerving, almost taunting, and it made her incredibly anxious.

"You like strawberries, yes?" he asked, knowing full well what the answer to the question was. She always wondered why he did that, asked questions that he didn't need to. He had stalked her for years and knew her nearly better than she knew herself.

Still she nodded. "I do, they are my favorite."

"I thought so," he repiled.

She wondered if he was smiling behind his mask. It almost sounded like he could have been. She wasn't sure how exactly to feel about that.

Happy she supposed. Shouldn't wives want to make their husbands happy? Instead she simply felt a dull apathy, finding feeling to be an exhausting endeavor. She wondered if she could spend the rest of her life here, in this emotionless state that seemed so much safer than hope and so much safer than sadness.

She took another bite, chewing slowly. She could hardly taste it, finding herself absorbed in her own thoughts. Still he stared at her so hopefully and she forced a smile to her face, hoping it didn't look quite as uncomfortable as it felt.

Once upon a time she had found it awkward to eat with Erik. Now, though, she was used to it. The way he would stare at her, still as he refused to eat at all. He had told her that he didn't eat with her because he would have to remove his mask but now she wondered if that was only an excuse. He was thin, so unhealthily thin, and she morbidly wondered if he ate at all. Did he feel hunger? Was he simply starving himself in an effort to keep up his skeletal appearance? As much as he lamented his physical body he did take joy from his simple ability to intimidate with his presence.

Suddenly she was hit with an all encompassing fear. What if he was starving himself? What if he died and left her encased in this tomb? Sure she knew the way up but he had never taught her how to open the door herself. Would she starve to death? Would she kill herself to spare herself the misery of such an ending?

She set the pastry back on her plate, finding herself unable to swallow another bite with such morbid thoughts on her mind.

"Erik?"

"What is it?" he asked.

"Do you - I mean, you aren't starving to death are you?" It sounded so childish and silly now that she said it out loud but the fear was still there, nagging deep in her chest.

He blinked at her twice and then slowly shook his head. "No Christine, I assure you that I am not starving to death. I am simply very thin."

"Oh," she said, feeling terribly stupid.

"Why do you ask?" There was a hopefulness to his words, almost as though he dared to believe that she simply asked because she cared.

She hung her head shamefully, staring at the unappealing, half-eaten pastry on her plate. "If you - I mean, God forbid it - but if something happened to you what would I do?"

"Oh," he said, mirroring her own response albeit with far more feeling than she had. "You are an intelligent girl, Christine. I doubt that the mechanics of my front door are truly beyond your grasp."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to make you angry."

"You haven't made me angry," he said calmly. "It is Erik's fault anyway, for believing that it could be anything else."

She bit her lip as she stared down at her half-eaten breakfast. Erik would not be satisfied with such a small amount. She had never been one with a large appetite but even she could admit that four bites of a pastry was far from enough.

She lifted the pastry to her mouth, forcing down another bite.

"I'm sorry," she said after a long moment. "Sometimes I don't realize how heartless the things that I say can sound. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Of course not," he said flatly. "You are a sweet girl - you would never act out of malice."

She couldn't quite tell wether he was being sarcastic or sincere but the comment bit all the same. How odd that he could make her feel guilty so easily, even when she knew it was not her that was in the wrong. How dare he, she thought. After all he had put her through how dare he press guilt onto her.

Instead of arguing she forced the last bit of the pastry down her throat, hoping that he would be satisfied enough with that. She kept her eyes downcast, tracing the patterns in the grain of the wood on the table - looking at anything but him.

"Thank you for breakfast, Erik," she said softly, her eyes still trained on the table. "It was very good."

It wasn't a lie, not really. She was sure if she had not been in so much turmoil it would have been a wonderful meal. His cooking was one thing she had always enjoyed, a strange thing for a man that seemed to possess such an aversion to food to be good at, but he always did his best to be sure she had a hearty, warm meal. The opera had always provided her with meals but there was something to be said about a lovingly prepared home cooked meal.

"A husband must see to his wife's needs."

She could feel his eyes on her and she did her best not to recoil at his words. There was no horror at the thought - not anymore - there was no disgust, simply disappointment. There was a time when she would have gladly been his wife - in another time, in another life things could have been different.

Perhaps that other version of them would have even been happy.

"Erik will be a good husband to you," he said after a long moment.

"I am sure that you will be," she said, tracing the edge of the table with her fingertips. "You have always taken care of me."

In the long silence she finally forced herself to look up, to look into his unnatural eyes that still sometimes made her shudder. "And I will - I will try my best to be a good wife for you too."

His head tilted as he looked at her. In that moment he seemed so truly harmless, so frail and curious. For just the shortest second she allowed herself to forget the horror he had brought into her life, forget how terrible he had been only the night before.

"I love you Christine," he reminded her, the words calm and complacent as he stared back at her intensely.

"I know that you do," she said, biting her lip as she tried her best to decipher his demeanor. She never knew what exactly would set him off, if perhaps he had expected her to lie to him, to tell him that she returned the feelings.

That was one thing she refused to do now. Now that it was all over, now that the cat had caught the mouse, there were no use in those games. She wouldn't lie, not anymore. It was far too exhausting. Her own torn thoughts were exhausting enough. She no longer had any desire to deceive him, it had never done her any good anyway.

"I cannot offer you a proper marriage," he said. "There will be no church, no priest. But you promised to be my wife - you promised me before God, see, he can see you even here. You cannot hide from him, and you made a promise right before him."

There was an odd desperation nudging its way into his voice and she couldn't help but to feel nervous, a chill descending upon her. She shivered, unable to hide it from him. "I know what I promised you, Erik. I promised to be your wife. I have no intention to go back on my word so long as you keep yours."

"My wife," he breathed reverently.

She couldn't help the shudder that came at the implication.


	3. First you breathe out

There were a blissful few days of silence for Christine in the beginning.

She wasn't sure where he had gone, but he certainly wasn't home. There was an odd silence in the echoing caverns, an empty and cold darkness. Once this may have frightened her - she had never truly enjoyed being in his home without him. Even she would regretfully admit that there was something calming about his presence, a sense of safety and security. When he was there the dark did not seem so oppressive, so frightening.

For the few days that he was gone, though, she promised herself that she would savor the solitude. So long as he wasn't there she didn't have to think so much, she didn't have to worry so terribly about words like marriage and husband, wife. She didn't have to dread that he would demand his husbandly rights in the night.

He left a note but it wasn't of much help. His notes usually weren't very helpful in explaining himself, though he himself didn't do a much better job.

Darling Christine,

Breakfast is prepared and waiting for you in the kitchen. I must be away for a bit to see to some important duties. Do not neglect your appetite.

Erik

How thoughtful he was. She had almost laughed the first time she read his childishly scribbled note, so simple in its composition. Even with his succinct writing he had not forgotten her threats and it seemed that he had taken them to heart. She found herself wondering if he would ever allow her to forget her own childish threats.

There was one benefit to living five stories below the crust of the earth - one that had never really crossed her mind before. It was not so terribly difficult to keep food. The thought came to her as she stood in his disturbingly drab kitchen, eating an apple as she rooted through the cupboards, finding them surprisingly empty.

Perhaps that was why he had gone above, she thought. To get groceries.

After the second day she began to wonder if something had happened to him. Surely no grocery trip lasted two whole days.

She pushed the concern from her mind with books, pulling her selections carefully from the bookshelves in his library and shutting herself away with them. She had always enjoyed reading - it had always been an escape for her. In her books she could be somewhere else, someone else. The concept had always been a welcome one and now she only found it more important to keep her simple escapes.

It wasn't until the third day of his absence that she began to truly worry that something was amiss.

The intention of lighting herself a fire was what led her into the front room. It was not a room that she frequented, more of an antechamber than anything. There were only two doors in the room - one that led further into his home and one that would lead to the shores of his lake.

If he had been there he would have scolded her for considering to light a fire.

'You will burn yourself,' he would say, taking the matches and lighting it for her.

Perhaps he wasn't always so terrible. He could be thoughtful at times, in moments such as those. Those memories were the ones that caused her to miss him, to wonder how long he would leave her in his dull, damp home alone. It all seemed so terribly morbid without him, being encased in this living tomb. He at least brought some life to the home, some mystery and warmth.

Regardless, she had gone into the front room to light a fire for herself and found herself confronted with an open front door.

She stood frozen, staring at it for a long moment.

"Hello?" she said nervously, wrapping her arms around herself. "Erik?"

No answer was given to her except for the steady echoing 'drip, drip, drip' of the ceiling over the lake.

She took one step and then two, then another until she stood before the door, boldly daring to allow her fingers to slip into the small gap between the door and the wall.

When she pulled it open she had fully expected to find him standing on the other side, she expected to be greeted by his unnatural yellow eyes and the betrayal and hurt that they conveyed so remarkably easily.

Instead she faced nothing but the blackness and chill of the air around his lake.

It wasn't until that moment that escape actually crossed her mind. It would be so easy to simply slip out, to leave and never come back. She could go to the gendarmes, lead a group of armed men down. It would all be over so easily, so quickly. She knew the way up just as well as she knew the way down; a path that he had insisted she learn. How easily she could undo him with his own thoughtlessness.

Instead she pulled herself back into his front room, pulling the door closed quickly before she could give it another thought.

She would kill him if she left. She knew that full well. Hadn't she betrayed him enough already?

How ridiculous she was, considering his feelings when he clearly hadn't give a second thought to hers. Yet there was something that compelled her to stay, something that ran deeper than her desperate attempt to save her former fiancé and childhood friend. Something that she dare not think too terribly hard about.

To think was only to feel and to feel was only to drive her further into his madness. That was something that she couldn't afford.

She found her way slowly back to her bedroom, all thoughts of a fire long gone by now. Instead she slipped between the far-too-silky sheets with a sigh, wondering if he would ever come home again as she drifted off to sleep.

"Christine?"  
His voice was timid and nervous, so unlike him and she shifted in her sleep, wondering if it really was him or some strange half-dream.

"Christine."  
It was firmer this time, beckoning her into consciousness. She sighed again, rolling onto her side and squinting in the direction of his voice.

"Erik?" Her voice was muddled and thick with her confused sleepiness.

He sighed in relief and she could hear his footfalls as he drew nearer to the edge of her bed. It was intentional - if she heard his approach it was completely intentional. Erik was more than capable of silent movement. Sometimes she wondered if he allowed his footfalls to be heavier in an attempt to keep from startling her.

"Erik is home," he said, his voice so near to her ear. "His many errands are finally completed. Did Christine - did she miss her Erik?"

There was hopefulness in his voice, something that she didn't hear often, and she couldn't find it in her to tear it away from him.

"Of course I did, Erik. It is terribly quiet and lonely here without you." It wasn't a lie at least. She comforted herself with that. Did she miss him? That she couldn't answer with certainty but she couldn't deny the slightest bit of relief that she felt at his return.

"Go back to sleep, Christine," his words were so sudden and abrupt but she found himself following his command, her eyelids growing heavy under the smooth lilt of his voice.

Quietly, gently, he sang her to sleep on a melody weaved of silk and gold.

It wasn't until the next evening that she realized what his errand had been for.

He summoned her from her bedroom with a firm knock and an announcement that it was time for supper, drawing her nervously into his presence.

He sat silently at the kitchen table, a glass of red wine sitting directly in the middle the table between them.

She sat nervously across from him, worrying her lip as she took in his stiff and serious demeanor.

"I've missed our dinners," she offered, trying to break the awkward silence that settled around them so often. "It's been so very quiet here."

"You've missed… me," he said as though he were attempting to string together some bit of information that made no sense.

"I have," she said, forcing herself to smile at him. She wondered if he could tell when her smiles were forced or not - surely she had given him a true smile at least once in the vast amount of time they had known one another.

If he realized it he gave no sign, simply reaching his hand across the table and laying it palm-up before her. "Give me your hand, Christine," his voice was so soft and gentle.

Surely she couldn't deny his request. She was to be a wife to him and to allow him to touch her hand was the least of what she could do. Still, she hesitated for reasons she couldn't quite pin down herself.

It wasn't until he sighed and began to pull his hand away that she relented, sliding her palm over his quickly. His breath caught and he let his fingers close around her wrist. Not too tightly, not too loosely, simply holding her hand in place.

His other hand reached into his breast pocket and next thing she knew he was sliding a ring onto her third finger.

So this was why he was gone so long, she thought as she looked at the new ring. It was certainly one of his own design, a ruby surrounded by a small smattering of diamonds. Simple, mostly. Expensive surely, but not nearly as ornate as she had expected from the man.

"If you are my wife then you will have a proper ring," he said, lifting his eyes from her finger to meet hers. "There was another design but it was too - you will like this one more."

"Thank you, Erik," she said, slowly pulling her hand away from his and examining the ring. "It's very pretty."

"You deserve only beautiful things, Christine," he said, suddenly slipping into a pensive quietness. He pulled his hand quickly away from her, smoothing his lapels nervously as he avoided her eye.

There was something almost charming about his nervousness sometimes. Perhaps that was a cruel thought to have as it was obvious that it tortured him but she couldn't help it. He did have some level of empathy, some understanding of what he was doing to her. She could see it in his eyes sometimes, a deep regret and self loathing that he couldn't quite hide from her.

He cleared his throat, pulling at his cravat. "I also have a paper for you to sign, after you've supped."

She ate slowly that night, dreading what was to come. And sure enough after he had cleared the dishes he was presenting her with two papers, each one a notarized certificate of marriage.

She was half tempted to ask him where he had managed to get such documentation - it was no use though. Erik was a resourceful man and she had no doubt of his abilities.

His signature was already marring each paper in that childish script that she had come to know so well.

"It's simply a reassurance," he said to her as she nervously held his quill between her trembling fingers. "You've already agreed to be my wife with words - surely a document is not asking so very much."

She did not have much of a choice; she realized that much. Even if she refused to sign them she was sure that her signature would somehow find it's way on to the page. So she took a deep breath and scribbled her own name onto the line beside his, wondering if this was what it felt like to sell one's soul. Just as Faust had, she made a deal with the devil.

The only difference was that her devil was a living man and try as she may she couldn't manage to forget it.

How strange - for so long he had been inhumane to her; untouchable, unreachable. But now, even hidden by the blank white of his mask, she could not manage to make herself see him as anything less than the man that he was. There was no angel, no demon, simply a very sad misguided, ugly man.

He smiled beneath his mask as he took the pages from her, she was almost sure of it. She could see it in his eyes, try as he may to hide it.

Finally he was lifting the long forgotten wine glass into his hand, cradling it between his strangely elongated fingers.

"I suppose this is our wedding night," his voice was so nervous, even as he tried to keep it smooth.

"I suppose it is," she said, dread sinking into the pit of her stomach.

He sighed, looking down into the red of the wine as he avoided her eye. "I offer you a choice."

Her stomach churned at that. A choice. He had offered her so many useless choices. What was the point in offering a choice if he knew what the outcome would be? They were not choices, they were simply an illusion, an attempt to keep her blind to how very powerless she truly was beside him.

"What is my choice?" she asked, not bothering to even attempt to hide the tremble in her voice.

He held the wineglass out as though it were an offering. "If you drink it," he said, "it will put you into a deep sleep. You will not have to endure your wedding night. You will wake with no recollection."

Her laugh was a dry and choking thing, more of a sob than a laugh but she nodded slowly. "May I have some time to think about it?"

His posture straightened at that. "Of course," he said softly. "Come, come, I will play for you. I have a new composition, just for you."

She sighed but when he offered her his free hand her fingers slipped between his, allowing him to whisk her away once more into the music room.

As he played she thought, his music lulling her into a strange calmness. His music was one thing she would never tire of - the way that it pulled her under, the way that it soothed her as easily as a drug. The way that she allowed it to slip inside of her and take her apart until even she could not define her own thoughts, her own feelings.

When the piece was over he hesitated for a long moment. Then, slowly, he stood and took the glass between his fingers again as he made his way to where she sat on the couch, kneeling on the floor before her as he looked into her eyes.

"It is your decision, Christine," he said again, holding the glass out to her.

She nodded, then she was taking the glass from him with trembling fingers.

He watched her so carefully, so closely as she brought the glass to her lips and drank deeply.

When the glass was empty he sighed, daring to let his cold fingers brush against her cheek.

"You are loveliness itself, Christine."

He breathed the words so reverently, speaking them as though they were a prayer. She could feel her limbs growing heavy as she stared back at him, trying so hard to focus on his eyes. Those two terribly glowing eyes, if only she could focus on those then perhaps…

Her eyelids were growing heavy, her thoughts slow and muddy as whatever drug he had offered her began to take hold. There was no use in fighting it. She knew that, yet still.

"Erik," his name felt so strange on her lips, so foreign and difficult.

His thumb brushed her cheek gently, offering her reassurance in the only way he seemed to know. "It's for the best," he said, his words sounding so terribly far away.

She blinked slowly, trying, trying so hard to keep herself afloat. "Erik," she wanted to say something, she knew that. She could hear the thought deep in her mind but she couldn't find it, couldn't quite grasp it; the two syllables of his name took far too much effort.

She felt his cold lips as he pressed them to her forehead, spreading a strange warmth. There was a lovingness there, a gentleness.

When she finally surrendered to the drug she felt herself slump forward. The last thing she could remember feeling was his arms encircling her tightly as she fell.


	4. It's a special death you saved for me

She woke with a start, a gasping breath forcing it's way through her as though she had forgotten what it was to breathe.

A quiver made it's way into her bones and she couldn't explain quite why. She trembled, reaching through her memory as she tried so hard to find herself, to find some explanation for her tired sluggishness, some reason for the empty ache that had burrowed into her, emanating from that space between her legs.

It wasn't until she looked down at the ring on her finger that it all came flooding back.

Marriage certificates.

Erik.

Music.

Wine.

Her face flushed terribly as she remembered bits and pieces. The feeling of his lips on her forehead, his fingers wrapped so gently around hers. A wedding night. That was what he had called it; their wedding night.

She made her way to the washroom on shaking legs, lighting the oil lamps that hung from the walls as she gazed at herself in the mirror. She did not look so very different, not so different as she felt. Even her fingers trembled as she raised them to touch her own cheek, just where she remembered his fingers being the night before.

She pressed her eyes closed tightly as tears pricked at them. How ridiculous she was. Surely this was exactly what she had wanted, the ability to deny the truth. The possibility of remaining ignorant of what had surely gone on as she slept. He had offered it to her and she had taken it greedily.

Plausible deniability, so to say. How could she possibly be held responsible for what had occurred when she was asleep? That had been his intention, she was sure of it. To allow her to separate herself from the situation. Surely she couldn't hold guilt for something he had done. Perhaps she had believed that too.

Now, though, there was simply an empty hopelessness. How terribly she wished Raoul was there; good, kind, sweet, safe Raoul. He would wrap her in his strong arms, hold her against his warm chest as he promised her that he forgave her sins, as he reminded her that it wasn't her fault - that her heart was simply far too tender, that she had been taken advantage of in only the worst ways.

But she hadn't been taken advantage of, had she? Her fantasy was falling apart before her. Raoul was no more than a distant memory now, the ghost of something she had once dared to dream. There would be no aristocrat's wedding, no parties to host or women to meet. There would be no children to tuck into bed and kiss on the forehead, no stories to tell them of angels and sun and light.

Even if she found her way out of this place she could hardly marry him. Her station was already so far beneath his. His family hardly approved already - how could she dare to offer herself as a bride when she was no longer pure? Had she not caused him enough pain?

She ran herself a hot bath, grateful for the sound of the water covering her cries. Cry she did, for the life that would never be and for her husband - her husband that she couldn't bear to touch in her waking hours. Her husband who loved her so thoroughly even as she reviled him so deeply; her husband who wanted no more than love but settled so easily for a fickle wife that pined for another man.

She scrubbed at her skin, finding that even the boiling water was not enough to wash away the guilt of her sins. She scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was angry and red. Scrubbed away his touch, scrubbed away her thoughts, scrubbed away the dreams that she had lost.

Hurt. She was hurt. That was the simplest explanation she could find for the aching pain in her chest. He hurt her. Not physically, no. She only had to imagine that he was the tenderest of lovers - he had always handled her as some precious, breakable thing in her waking hours and she had no reason to believe he had behaved any more brutishly as she slept. No bruises marred her skin. The only proof she had of what had occurred was the empty, dull ache between her legs.

It was not his actions that hurt her. She was his wife, she had promised him that and wives do have a duty. No, it wasn't that. It was the simple fact that a bride is not meant to wake alone the morning after her wedding. She was not meant to be alone after her wedding night. She wondered if he had stayed at all or if he had simply found his satisfaction and left.

She liked to believe that he stayed. That he pulled her into his arms and pressed kisses to her forehead, that he murmured his love tenderly to her. That his fingers gently caressed her skin in an unspoken apology for all he had taken from her. And yet it was far easier to believe that he had run away.

Perhaps he was afraid she would be frightened to wake and find him beside her. Perhaps he had thought it was for the best that he leave her to pretend it was a morning just like every other. But it wasn't a morning like any other.

She was his wife. Was it so wrong to long for reassurance? Was it so terrible to want nothing more than to be held and cosseted? Surely it was not so terrible to be human, to long for human touch, for human comfort.

He was not her first choice. She felt guilt for that too. Still, if only he had attempted, if only he could bring himself to be human for her. It was not so terrible to be married to a man she did not love - surely there were many women married to men they didn't love. It was far more rare for a marriage to be born out of love than it was to find one born of necessity. They found a way to be happy, all of those other people. Dare she hope that she could too?

In a way she supposed she should count herself lucky - at least her husband did love her, even if she couldn't love him. Loved her deeply, loved her in the most terrifying of ways, but loved her all the same.

She didn't bother dressing. Instead she pulled on the same nightgown that Erik had kindly dressed her in and pulled a dressing gown over her shoulders, tying it tightly. She slipped her feet into the soft slippers he had brought her so long ago, wiggling her toes in their warmth.

She found him in the parlor, staring into a warmly blazing fire. He did not look at her but he knew she was there - she could tell in the way that his fingers tightened on the arms of his chair, in the way that his shoulders tensed.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. His voice was heavy with regret, crackling on the words as though the fire blazed over them instead of wood. He shook his head, his eyes never shifting from the fire. "I am so sorry, Christine."

She shifted from foot to foot, wrapping her arms around herself as she tried to decide what to make of this new Erik. Perhaps he was realizing that dreams were not always so simple too. Maybe he was finally facing the reality of what a mess they had made for themselves, finding the reality of a wife that didn't love him.

One step at a time she made her way to him, each step drawing a breath from her, causing her to shiver. She wondered if there would ever be an end to the tremor in her shoulders, to the shakiness in her legs. She wondered if she would ever feel whole again.

He finally dared to look up at her when she was only a step away from him. She was taken aback by the look in his eyes, the deep regret and exhaustion that had made it's home there.

"Erik will never touch you again if you wish it."

There it was - that childishness, his own attempts to distance himself from the sins that he couldn't quite repent for. She wondered if they really were so very different, if either of them would ever be able to forgive themselves, forgive each other.

She shook her head at that, forcing herself to take a step and then, slowly, another.

He watched her tiredly as she climbed into his lap, his breath catching as she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in the collar of his shirt in an attempt to hide the tears that she couldn't manage to stem.

His arms finally returned her embrace, so unbearably slowly. His long, cold fingers stroked the skin of her neck gently. She was almost amused to find that he trembled just as much as her.

When he finally pressed his face into her hair she could feel his tears too, falling onto the skin of her forehead and mingling with her own until finally they entwined, falling to wet the fabric of his collar.

"It is terribly rude to leave your bride alone after her wedding night," she said, sniffling in an attempt to cover the tremble of her voice.

"It is terribly rude to drug the bride," he said dryly, his fingers continuing their soothing petting.

She allowed herself to laugh - a dry, empty laugh, but a laugh all the same. His hand on her waist tightened.

"I suppose it is," she said softly.

"Tell me what to do," his tone was so desperate, begging her. "Tell me how to make it better."

She was pulling away just the slightest bit, covering his hand on her waist with hers as she looked into his terrible eyes. "I don't know how to make it better, Erik," she confessed as she pressed her fingers into the space between his.

His eyes slid closed at her words and he let out a terrible sigh. She could feel the quake of his very soul, the fractured and broken thing that it was. His soul that begged her so desperately to hold it together, to save him.

 _Help me._

She could hear the cry from his beating heart, she could see it in his eyes, the desperation for some bit of humanity, for some taste of love. His tired and terrible eyes.

"I can let you go," his words were broken, searching desperately for some solution, for some way to absolve himself of the terrible sins he had committed. "I can take you to the boy, I could let you go. Let you - let you have the life that you deserve."

She chewed her lip, contemplating his offer. What if she said yes? What if she dared to reach out and take what he offered? Dare she? Dare she believe it? Could she bear to see the pain in his eyes, to know that his death would rest on her shoulders? Could she ever live with the guilt of being the final break in his already cracked soul?

"Was that your plan from the start? To take me to the bridal bed and then discard me when you realized that you were in over your head?" she said it flatly, trying to keep anger out of her voice. He did not need anger now, she didn't need anger now.

"Christine -"

"Your words are pretty, Erik, and I do appreciate the sentiment," she looked carefully at him as she spoke. "But it is far too late for that, don't you think?"

His eyes slid down to their hands, entwined against her waist. He took in a deep, shuddering breath, his head shaking as he stared at their hands. "Then tell me what to do."

Her fingers nudged his chin until finally he relented, looking into her eyes again.

"Be my husband," she said simply, blinking at him as she tilted her head just the slightest bit. She wished that she could see his face, that she could make out the expression that hid beneath the mask. She wished that she were a stronger woman, that she could pull the mask away without worrying for her own reaction.

"I don't know how," his confession was whispered and low, a secret that hung heavily between them.

Overtaken by either confidence or foolishness her hand found the edge of his mask, sliding it up so that she could press her lips to his own misshapen, cold lips.

A bridal kiss for a dead husband and a living wife.


	5. There's a darkness in the flame

Life was hard sometimes.

It was a conclusion that Christine had come to time and time again. She first had the revelation when her father died - a truly terrible loss that she had yet to fully recover from. Her father's death which had been the catalyst for this entire mess that she had found herself in. She didn't blame him - not really. Only fools believed fairytales as thoroughly as she had and she doubted that her father thought her a fool.

The second time she reached the conclusion was when Mamma Valerias had grown ill. She was an old woman when Christine had first been sent to live with her. Mamma's husband had invested heavily in her father's work and when word of his death reached them they had immediately asked to take her into their care. They were a kind old couple, just a bit too old to be raising a child as young as she had been, but kind all the same and she was always grateful for them. Mamma's husband passed shortly after Christine arrived, swept away by the scarlet fever. It was a miracle that it had not been passed on to Christine and Mamma; at least, that's what the doctors said.

When Mamma grew ill Christine became aquatinted with the word pneumonia. A terrible infection of the lungs, an unforgiving thing that crept up quietly and left you drowning in your own body. She was sent to the opera house shortly after the diagnosis. Mamma had always intended for her to study there and when she began to grow ill she sent Christine on the urging of the doctors, who insisted that it was Christine's best chance.

Christine often wondered if it was all fate. Surely the stars only aligned so perfectly once in a century or two. For her father's favorite story to be that of the angel of music, for Mamma to grow ill and send her to an opera house inhabited by a man willing to play that role. For Erik to have heard her speak the story, for him to know just the right tricks to convince her naive self that he was an angel.

So many things had to fall in line just so perfectly. Sometimes she wondered it was the hand of God, reaching down and touching her mediocre life. Perhaps she had never had any choice in the matter, any hope of things ending up any differently.

The only real question she had left was why. She had no doubt that the entire ordeal had been orchestrated by something far out of her control. The only thing that she couldn't manage to find was a reason. Was it retribution for some terrible sin that she had committed? Was there some piece of the puzzle that she was missing?

"That is a G, Christine," Erik said, looking up at her from the piano.

"I know," she said, chiding herself for her laziness, her wandering mind.

"Then you should sing a G," he snapped. "And not a C."

She flinched at his harsh tone. It had been a long while since he had snapped at her and it made her nervous. He had been so careful with her, so gentle that she feared that she had let her guard down far too easily. She knew Erik well; well enough to know that even when he was kind and gentle it was safest to remain wary of him.

"Forgive me," he said, sounding truly resentful. "I am only frustrated because I know that you can do better. I have heard you do better."

"I know," she said, biting her lip nervously. "I will do better - can you let me try to do better?"

He looked at her carefully and then he gave a curt nod. "At the beginning of the phrase."

She let her voice soar with his music. It was one of the few ways that she could truly please herself and her husband. Perhaps she couldn't offer him an enthusiastic touch, perhaps she couldn't let go of her own reservations. But in music she could offer herself completely to him, she could bear her soul to him.

When the song was over his fingers rested unmoving over the keys of the piano.

"Was it better?"

"It was perfect," he corrected her, looking back up at her. His eyes were softer now, lacking the harshness of only the moment before. "You are perfect, Christine."

She could feel her face flush at his words, and she quickly looked down at her feet. "Perhaps in voice. In other ways I am far from perfection."

He shook his head, swinging his legs around so that he sat facing her. Slowly he reached out, capturing her hand between his own cold set. "You are perfection."

She shivered, chilled by his touch and yet unwilling to pull away from him. She had made that mistake a few times before, finding his touch to be too cold. The hurt that always passed through his eyes was too much to handle sometimes. Instead she bore the chill.

"I don't like it when you say that, Erik," she confessed, low and quiet.

He blinked beneath his mask, tilting his head as he looked up at her. "It is simply the truth. Why does it bother you so?"

"Because I'm not perfect," she said, trying to keep the hysterical edge that she felt creeping into her voice at bay. "No person is perfect - it's impossible. And that - that is quite a lot of pressure to put on someone. An unfair amount of pressure."

"You are perfect to me," he said instead, regarding her carefully. His eyes searched her face closely. She wasn't sure what exactly it was that he hoped to see there. "Is that better?" "I am flawed like anyone else," she argued, nervously rubbing the fingers of her free hand together. "Expecting perfection is expecting far too much. It makes me nervous."

"You are flawed," he conceded, one finger traveling up her wrist until it rested over her pulse. "It simply makes you more perfect. I do not think you understand."

"I don't think you understand, Erik," she said, feeling her temper beginning to rise. He always did manage to find that one thing, that one thing that would set her off, that one thing that she was so insecure about. It was dumb, she knew that. She shouldn't be arguing with him over semantics - they had enough problems without such petty disagreements being blown out of proportion - but she could hardly help herself. "I am not perfect! If you expect me to be perfect then how will you manage when I inevitably hurt you?"

"You've hurt me many, many times," he reminded her. "I still think that you are perfect. Do you want to know why I think that?"

What she really wanted to do was tear her hand from his grasp, to remind him of how terribly cold his fingers were. Instead she sighed. Patience, that was one thing that she was learning. "Why do you think that?" she asked, trying her best to indulge in his games. It was for the best.

"Because even now you are frustrated with me," he said, looking down at her hand captured between his and lifting it to the lips of his mask before letting it go. "And you are still patient with me. Because I have hurt you too - terribly so, and yet you still worry so much over offending me. You are kind, Christine, in heart and soul. You have treated me - you've treated me as a human, not some terrible monster. That makes you perfect - your heart makes you perfect, even if it does not love me."

"Erik," she said sadly, sitting beside him on the bench and taking his cold fingers between hers again. He let her see into his mind so rarely. He wore two masks - one physical and one emotional. It was rare to see behind either of them.

"You are human, Erik," she reminded him gently, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. "Sometimes I think that you prefer to forget that."

"Sometimes it is hard to remember," he said, looking down at their entwined hands. "But you always remind me. I used to think I was too far gone but you - you reminded me. You are perfect for that, Christine."

"Show me your face," she wasn't sure what possessed her to make the demand. Perhaps simply to remind herself of it; perhaps all of his talk of perfection had made her foolishly brave.

Whatever it was that compelled her to make the demand it caused him to pull away, standing as though putting distance between them would keep her from tearing the mask away. "Why would you even ask that of me?"

He was hurt; betrayal and pain lined his voice so clearly. He took her silence as an answer and scoffed. "Perhaps you would like to mock me. Am I too human to you now? Do you need to remind yourself of the monster that I am?"

"I need to see it, Erik," she wasn't sure how she managed to keep her voice steady.

"You've seen it," he snapped, glaring at her through narrowed eyes. "You know full well what is there."

He knelt in front of her. There was no gentleness when his hands closed tightly around her wrists, pulling them roughly toward his face.

"If you need to remind yourself of the monster your husband is then don't let me stop you, dear," his snarl was vicious and she did her best to keep the fear from her face.

He covered her hands with his, his fingers twisting around hers and forcing them under the edges of his mask.

She wasn't sure what on earth had compelled her to ask this of him. Perhaps she had dared to believe that she was stronger than she once was. Maybe she had let herself believe him - believe that her heart was too good to be revolted by the sight.

It was terrible. His malformed lips that seemed to be twisted into a permanent snarl, the two slits on smooth skin where his nose should have been, the nearly translucent skin, the criss-crossing network of bulging blue veins. Still she choked down her revulsion, staring in a sick sort of self punishment.

He stared back at her, his yellow eyes suddenly seeming to fit so very well with the rest of his near-reptilian appearance. They were both perfectly still aside from their heaving chests. He held her hands tightly, pressing her palms to his cool cheeks.

"Erik," she whispered, forcing herself to swallow.

"He is terribly ugly, isn't he?" the rage had faded from his voice, replaced with an empty sadness that she found only more horrible. "If Erik could be handsome then maybe Christine could love him."

"Stop it," she said, scolding him as though he were a child. She was sliding closer, letting herself kneel just as he did, daring to allow her thumb to brush against his cheek.

His breath caught at her touch, tears welling in his eyes. Her thumb brushed over his cheek again and his hands began to loosen over hers, his passion having spent him. He let his tears fall as his hands dropped limply to his sides, watching her while she brushed her fingers over the skin of his face.

"How can you even bear it?" he murmured tiredly.

She didn't answer. Instead she let her fingers explore his skin. It did not feel so very different. Cold, sure. Everything about him was so terribly cold. But his skin was soft and firm to her touch, not nearly as fragile as it looked. It made her so terribly sad. Perhaps his face was not the reason she didn't love him - she was sure she could love him despite his face - but it had certainly played its part in the events that shaped him into the man he was today.

"Your skin is soft," she murmured stupidly. His eyes closed at her declaration and he drew in a shuddering breath.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked softly, exhaustion coloring his words.

"I don't want to be afraid anymore," she answered. Her thumbs brushed over his cheekbones. "I am your wife," she reminded him softly. "I should not be afraid."

He trembled under her touch. She wondered if anyone had ever truly loved him, had ever truly supported him. She wanted to ask him; she wanted to know about his mother, about his father, about his life before her. Instead she pressed her lips to his forehead and wrapped her arms tightly around him, letting him press his bare face into the fabric of her sleeve as he cried.

Life was hard sometimes. It was a lesson she wasn't sure she would ever finish learning.


	6. You are never far behind me

She wasn't sure when Erik left but she certainly knew when he returned home; the click of the front door was a rather unmistakable sound.

He hadn't expected to see her so soon after he came home, that much was clear. His cravat was loose, hanging untied from his collar and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. It was so rare to see him in only his shirtsleeves and yet there he was, his jacket hanging from the tips of his spindly fingers.

Her brow furrowed at the sight of him. "Where have you been?"

"Running errands," he said simply, ignoring the suspicious look she fixed on him.

"Did your errands untie your cravat?" she asked, her brow lifting with her question.

"Hold on," he said, turning and looking at her so oddly. He was smirking at her beneath his mask, she was sure of that. There was one look that was unmistakable in her husband and that was it. "Are you jealous, Christine?"

"Jealous? Hardly. I just find it rather rude that my husband doesn't inform me when he will be out gallivanting about the opera house."

He laughed richly at that, tilting his head as he looked at her. "Perhaps you would like to smell my collar, just to be sure that I haven't been in some lady friend's company," he offered, pulling the edge of his collar open.

"You are cruel," she breathed, twisting her wedding band around her finger. Perhaps she was jealous. Perhaps she was simply curious. Either way she found his lighthearted dismissal of her concern to be truly callous.

He grew somber at her words. "I only meant to make you laugh."

She made no response, staring at her wedding band as she continued to twist it around her finger. It was a pretty ring - a terribly pretty ring. Sometimes she was disheartened by the fact that she had to keep it all to herself, that she couldn't go out and show it off the way any other wife would.

When his hand came up to frame her face she flinched - it was an unintentional movement but the damage was easily done and he withdrew into himself almost as quickly, taking a quick step away from her.

"I promised you that I would keep him alive," he said under his breath, looking down at his fingers as though they had betrayed him in some unmistakable way. "That requires certain varying levels of care."

Her breath caught in her chest. "Raoul?"

Erik flinched in just the same way she had at the sound of his name but he nodded all the same. "Your fiancé."

"All this time - where have you been keeping him, Erik?" she asked, her brow furrowing.

"Somewhere safe," he answered vaguely.

She sighed, knowing that he would hardly allow the conversation to go further than that. "Have you been fighting?" she asked, looking him up and down again.

"No," he assured her, finally looking at her as he shook his head only the slightest bit. "It is simply a long walk there and back and I was warm."

There were so many questions that she wanted to demand answers to. Questions that revolved around her former fiancé, questions about his health, about where he was being kept, about whether he would ever be free.

Instead she pushed the questions away, catching her husband's cold hand in hers. "Will you play for me, Erik?" she asked, trying her very best to sound hopeful.

He looked at her closely, his eyes sweeping over her face then, slowly, he nodded. "Let me change and I will play for you."

"Thank you," she said, forcing herself to smile at him.

He did play for her for a long time. She closed her eyes, laying on the couch in the music room and allowing herself to ride the wave of his music. Sometimes she craved his music just as strongly as an addict craved drugs. Sometimes she felt as though she needed it just as much as she needed to breathe. She allowed it to wash over her, sweeping away all of her questions.

When the music did end she laid just where she was, her eyes pressed tightly closed and her arm thrown over them to block out the harsh light of the many candles he had insisted on lighting.

"Christine?" he said softly. She could feel his eyes on her but she had no desire to move. Her skin still tingled with his music, her limbs heavy and relaxed.

"Hmm?"

"Are you terribly angry with me?" he asked, his question full of timid nervousness.

"No," she answered simply, pulling her arm from over her eyes and letting her head fall to the side, looking at him sideways.

"Why?"

She sighed, pressing her lips together as she thought carefully about her response. "It is nothing I didn't already know. I tried to forget it, but I've known it from the start. It doesn't really change anything does it?"

He blinked, tilting his head as he looked at her as though she were some mystifying puzzle that he had lost the final piece to. "Do you hate me very much?"

"Not so very much, only a little," she said, laughing at the way his eyes widened with her words. "I do not hate you, Erik."

"And you said I was cruel," he grumbled, narrowing his eyes at her.

She laughed again, rolling onto her side and propping her head up on her palm. "I do not try to be cruel," she said, smiling at the floaty feeling that still lingered in the tips of her fingers and toes.

"You are so very beautiful when you smile," he said softly.

"What about when I frown?" she asked, pulling her lips down into an exaggerated frown.

"When you frown, too," he answered quickly. "Though I much prefer it when you smile."

"Can I ask you something without you being angry?" she asked, looking at him seriously.

"I cannot promise that it will not make me angry," he answered, his voice full of caution.

"Will you still answer it, even if it makes you angry?"

"That depends entirely on the question."

"Does he hate me?" she bit her lip, bracing herself for his rage.

There was no rage, though. There was simply a long moment of silence, a softness finding its way into his eyes as he gazed at her. "No one hates you, Christine."

She let herself fall back against the couch, staring up at the stone ceiling, her eyes tracing along a superficial crack that trailed perpendicular to the couch. "Sometimes I think he must."

"No one blames you for what happened," he assured her. "He hates me - he hates me very much, and rightfully so. He does not blame you - and he certainly doesn't hate you."

She sniffed, rubbing at her eyes with her palms as she nodded. "Thank you for not being angry."

"You should not feel guilty," he said slowly. "You are not guilty. The only guilty party in this mess is me, Christine."

Those moments were the ones in which she dared to find her hope. To hear his sincere acceptance of the part he had played, to see the remorse that so rarely crept into him. Perhaps, if he meant it, all was not so terribly lost. If he loved her, truly loved her, then maybe it would not be so terrible if she dared to let that glimmer of hope live in her.

"Erik?" she whispered to the ceiling as she twisted his ring thoughtfully around her finger.

"What is it?" he asked, his eyes careful on her.

"Do you love me very much?" It seemed such a silly question to ask and yet it felt so very important all the same.

"You are more a piece of me than my own heart," he answered gently. "I love you more than you will ever know or understand - more than I could ever express. I never want you to doubt that."

Something about his answer caused a warmth in her, a warmth that spread from her chest and through to the tips of her fingers. She had to wonder if it was an after effect of his music or if it truly was simply his words that spurned it on.

Either way she finally forced herself to sit up, leaning forward on the edge of the couch as she fixed her eyes on him.

"It makes me happy that you love me," she confessed, her hands pressed against the soft cushion on both sides of her.

"It does?" he sounded truly surprised by her words.

She nodded, peeking up at him. "Sometimes it feels like it is too much, too terribly much. It feels safe, though, to know that you love me so very much. But I don't love you, not quite, and sometimes I think that it is terribly selfish of me to covet your love."

"I love you enough for both of us," he said simply. "And I hardly believe anyone is lining up to take it. I do not think that you can covet something that is so lacking in demand. And I do not mind it so much, that you don't love me. It is not so bad because you let me love you."

He was ugly, so terribly ugly and unstable. And yet, at times, he could be incredibly charming. She wondered if he sometimes needed the same reassurance that she did, if he felt that same creeping insecurity that she sometimes did. She was sure the he did - almost positive. She knew that he loved her through and through and she felt it - she couldn't imagine that it was any easier knowing that she didn't love him.

"Will I ever see the sun again?" She wasn't truthfully expecting an answer to such a silly question. It was one that she thought of often, though, a wistful sort of thought that came and went.

He sighed, looking down at his feet. "I am sure it could be arranged," he said softly. "I have no promises to give you on when. But if you wish to see the sun you will see the sun, even if it means we have to go to the ends of the Earth."

"Like a vacation?" she asked, her brow furrowing.

"I suppose," he answered softly, looking back up at her. "Would you like to go on a… vacation with me?"

"Would it be safe?"

"Our travel would not be so conventional," he answered, "but it would be safe. I would not put you in danger."

She nodded slowly at that. "If it was safe I think that I would like to go on a vacation with you. It would be good, I think. For both of us."

He nodded in return, looking down at his hands. "Then I will take you on a vacation," he promised.

She couldn't help but to smile at that. She had never been on a vacation, not a real one. She had never traveled simply for pleasure - she had traveled between Perros and Paris, sure, but that was hardly a vacation.

When they sat down for supper that night Erik presented her with another glass of wine, setting it beside her plate and looking at her meaningfully, his eyes searching her face as though he were looking for some unspoken objection.

She was careful not to let him see any. She was not a good wife - despite his constant reassurances, his insistence that she was perfect she knew that she was not a good wife. If he wished to impose his husbandly rights she would not deny him.

She ate slowly that night as she contemplated the wine in the glass beside her plate. Would she ever be able to allow him into her bed like any other husband? It all felt so terribly cruel to her, to make him feel as though she had to be asleep to force some affection out of her. But she couldn't bring herself to - even with his sweetness, even with his promises of vacation and his words of love.

Perhaps this was the way he sought her reassurance. He offered her no ultimatums with this glass; it was a true choice. She could choose to drink it and she could choose not to - and in much the same way she could tell him no. Something deep inside of her told her that he would not argue it.

When she finished eating, finally setting the fork upon her plate, she took a deep breath, standing and making her way to him before he could even clear the dishes.

Her palms were sweating but she was sure he did not mind so much. He made no comment on it as her fingers closed around his. He stood as she tugged on his hand and she took a long moment to rearrange their grasp, fitting her fingers into the space between his, holding his hand tightly and nervously.

He made no attempt to rush her, no movement to hurry her along. She took the glass between the fingers of her free hand as they passed by it.

When she finally managed to sequester him into her bedroom she nervously shut the door behind them, lighting her oil lamp and letting it burn at the lowest setting, leaving the glass on the bedside table beside it.

"Will you stay this time?" she asked, unable to hide the nervous quiver in her voice. It was a silly thing, really, to feel so nervous. She had been here before, this had happened before. This time, though, it seemed so incredibly real, so unlike the night that he had proclaimed to be their wedding night.

"Do you want me to?" his voice was so quiet, a murmured question, almost as though he were afraid if he spoke any louder he would lose just as much control of his voice as she had.

She nodded slowly in answer. "I do," she confessed, training her eyes on his cravat, finding herself unable to look up at him.

"Then I will stay," he said simply.

She sat nervously on the edge of the bed and patted the space beside her. "Will you sit with me?"

He obeyed her request quickly, sliding into the space beside her.

She lifted the glass again, looking at him carefully before she lifted it to her lips. One, two, three long, deep sips was all it took to drain it and she sat the empty cup back in its place, looking over at him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, brushing at her lips with the back of her hand.

"Why on Earth are you sorry?" he asked, his cool fingers skimming along her jaw.

"One day I will be a normal wife for you," she said softly. "One day you will not have to ply me with alcohol and drugs. I'm sorry that it isn't today. I'm sorry that I'm weak and afraid and childish."

"I love you just as you are," he answered, his cold thumb brushing over her cheek.

She could feel the sluggishness setting in. It was just enough to muddy her mind but she remembered how quickly it had all hit last time. She reached up, nudging his mask up so that she could press her lips to his.

Perhaps she could not give him all of herself when she was conscious, but her lips were not such a terribly big thing to ask.

When she slid his mask back into place her world began to sway. It was difficult to concentrate even on his eyes. The darkness would come at any moment, she could feel it closing in on her, creeping in at the edges of her vision and she tugged on his arm meaningfully.

She was grateful for his perceptiveness. He slid back, pulling her into his arms as they laid upon the bed. How odd it was to be in his arms. His fingers stroked her gently, smoothing her hair and dragging soothingly over her neck and arm.

"I love you so very much, Christine," he whispered to her in the half darkness.

She hummed, anything more seeming impossible, and nuzzled in against his thin chest as she finally surrendered herself to the darkness.


	7. This is where I build my home

When she woke it was to the feeling of his cold fingertips brushing her hair out of her face. The room was completely dark and the only thing she could make out was his eyes, staring at her from the blackness beside her pillow.

"Erik?" she whispered, forgetting how groggily she woke from the influence of whatever drug it was that he offered her.

His eyes were moving further and further away from her and she reached out in the darkness, satisfied only when her hand made contact with the fabric of his sleeve, freezing him in place.

"You asked me to stay," his voice was accusatory, a sudden defensiveness that she hadn't quite expected.

"I did," she confirmed, tugging firmly on his sleeve. "Stay just a little longer."

She was only satisfied when he laid back against the pillow, his gaze fixed nervously on her.

"Why did you turn the light out?" she murmured, keeping a tight hold on his sleeve just in case he decided to attempt another escape.

"I can't sleep with my mask," he said flatly. "I thought it would be kinder to allow you to wake to the darkness than to my face."

Her fingers found his cheek, brushing over his smooth skin. It was so strange; here in the darkness she could picture him whole. Pale white skin. His eyes would be green - or maybe amber, just a few shades darker than his odd catlike eyes. His nose would be thin but strong, his lips would be full.

She brushed her thumb under his malformed lips. Here, in the darkness, even they did not seem so odd. A bit dry, perhaps, but they did not feel so terrible as they looked in the light.

She leaned forward, brushing her lips gently against his and swallowing his contented sigh.

They were cold. All of him was so incredibly cold and she shivered, leaning back and looking into his yellow eyes.

"How do you feel?" he murmured, sounding honestly concerned.

She shrugged one shoulder in the darkness. She couldn't see him but she knew full well that he could see her. "Groggy," she answered, smiling softly as her thumb brushed against his cheek. "Aside from that, no worse for wear."

"No pain?"

"No pain," she answered.

He sighed in relief, falling back against the pillow. "Last time, was there pain?"

"No pain," she answered, watching as he rolled back onto his side to look at her. "A little soreness, but I expected as much."

His eyes closed, extinguishing her only source of light. She reached out in the darkness, her hand finding his in an attempt to reassure herself that he was still there. For so long she had dreaded his touch. It was strange to realize now that she drew comfort from it, drew comfort from knowing that he was close to her.

"Erik?" "Hmm?"

"What time is it?"

He shifted in the darkness, turning his back to her. She could hear the drag of a thin chain on wood.

"Seven thirty," he said as she heard the thud of his pocket watch on the bedside table. "It is early yet."

"I don't want to get up," she complained, stretching against the bed and rolling onto her side.

"You don't have to," he answered, his lips pressing hesitantly to her forehead.

She hummed. "Are you going to bring breakfast to me here?" she murmured teasingly, finding his hand again and lacing her fingers through his.

"If you wish it," he said seriously.

She laughed in the darkness. "You are sweet," she said softly. It was odd how very content she felt in that moment, how very brave the dark made her.

She pressed closer and closer to him, ignoring the way that he looked at her so curiously, until finally she could wrap her arms around him, pressing her face against his thin, cold chest. The cold of his skin was biting, even through the fabric of his shirt, but she felt no desire to relinquish her hold on him.

His fingers were so incredibly hesitant as they stroked her hair, jerky and unsure but there all the same.

He sighed as she pressed herself against him. "How can you deny your perfection when you offer me mornings such as these?"

She blushed, finding herself glad that her face was buried in his shirt. "Whatever you say, Erik," she whispered.

She was rewarded with a deep laugh, rich and full as his lips pressed to the crown of her head.

He did not bring her breakfast to bed after all. After some coaxing he managed to convince her to abandon the warmth of her bed with a promise of music and sweets. She was a simple girl, really, and she was not so very difficult to ply. Perhaps that was what drew him to her in the first place - her simplicity.

And after breakfast he rewarded her with music, playing and singing for her until even her scalp tingled with his music. Hours of music he gave her, so much so that she was surprised when he stopped, insisting that it was time for lunch.

It was not so very long after lunch that he paused, pulling his pocket watch out and glancing at the face.

"I cannot offer you sunlight today," he said softly. "But I will offer you fresh air. Would you like to go outside? It will not be until after dinner."

She hadn't even hesitated before giving her yes, wishing that he had waited later in the night to offer her such a thing. Surely he knew how very impatient she was.

Only just after dinner she began to pester him. He had hardly taken the last dish from the table and she was following him into the kitchen.

"Is it late enough yet?" she asked impatiently.

"Not quite yet, Christine."

To his credit, he remained in good humor about the whole thing. He was patient with her, giving her the same answer again and again. "Not quite yet."

The fourth time she asked he finally handed his pocket watch to her, undoing the chain from his waist coat.

"It is only eight," he said, pointing at the face of the watch. "When it strikes twelve, we will go."

She bit her lip as she looked at the clock. "That's four hours," she argued.

"It is, and it is the safest time for us to go. You know very well that it would not be good if either of us were seen."

And so she held onto his watch, torturing herself by glancing at it again and again. When it finally struck eleven thirty she presented it to him triumphantly.

"Soon?" she asked hopefully.

"Very soon," he promised her, sliding the watch back into it's rightful place. "I want you to wear black, no bright colors." She nodded. If that was what he required to allow the excursion she would obey his rule.

She found the darkest dress in her closet, pairing it with a set of long black gloves, even going so far as to find dark stockings and black shoes.

He seemed satisfied enough by her appearance as he wrapped her black cloak around her shoulders, fastening it. "Blue fits you far better than black," he said, his eyes scanning over her as he pulled the hood of her cloak up, pulling it low. She could almost hear the frown in his voice.

"Would you like me to change?"

"No," he said. "Black is best for now." It was a quarter past twelve by the time they finally began the long journey to the surface.

She hadn't quite understood his insistent in her wearing black until she found herself being led through the darkened, empty hallways of the opera house. Her fingers tightened around his.

"I have never liked being out here so late," she whispered.

He paused, looking back at her carefully. "Why?"

"Bad things happen out here late at night."

He blinked at her and continued in his step, hurrying her along. "Nothing will happen to you, Christine. Not when you are with me."

She believed him. Of course he would protect her - she had never doubted that fact. It still didn't help the anxiety that had settled into the pit of her stomach.

"Erik, I don't like this," she whispered nervously, afraid to speak any louder for fear of being heard.

"We are almost there," he promised her, leading her into the backstage.

"Something feels so very wrong," she argued.

The words were hardly out of her mouth before he turned, pressing his gloved hand over her mouth and pulling her deeper into the shadows that clung to the edges of the stage. She could feel his heartbeat in his throat, quick and harsh against the back of her head. She did her best to quiet her breathing, her eyes scanning the darkness for whatever it was he had seen - and there it was.

An old Persian man walked along the edge of the stage, scanning the darkness as though he were looking for someone. Erik's hand tightened over her mouth and his arm slid around her waist, pulling her tighter against himself as he pulled her only closer to the wall.

"Be very quiet," he commanded. The seriousness in his voice was enough to compel her to obey, even when he released her mouth, reaching behind him.

He pulled her slowly through a panel in the wall, pulling it closed with his free arm before he finally released his tight grip on her waist.

He turned her in the pitch black of the strange passage and his yellow eyes scanned her closely. "There is another way up," he whispered. "It is longer and slightly more inconvenient, but it leads to just the same place."

"I don't like this Erik," she repeated, not bothering to try to keep the hysterical edge from her voice.

He walked backwards slowly, his hands on her upper arms compelling her to follow him. "You've no reason to be afraid," he said quietly. "This way is far safer and I promise you will not see another soul. We will take the long way back down."

Something about the man had seemed so uncomfortably familiar, pricking just at the back of her mind. It was as they reached the first set of stairs that it hit her as clearly as day.

"The African forest," she said.

"What?" Erik's yellow eyes turned back to settle on her, his confusion evident in them.

"The African forest - he was there in the forest that night."

His grip tightened on her hand as he continued in his step. "He was."

"Then he is - he is your friend!" she was piecing it together slowly.

"He was," Erik repeated flatly. "I fear we are not on the best of terms at the moment."

Her brow furrowed as she followed him up and up. "Should we - should I be concerned?"

"Not so very much," he said, glancing back at her. "He fancies himself a detective but he's a rather poor excuse for one. The only reason he found my home at all was because I led him there purposefully. He is nothing more than a nosey old man - and if he did pose any sort of threat it would be to me, not to you."

"He knows where we live," she said nervously.

He stopped before a set of large doors, turning to face her. "He knows where the entrance to the torture chamber is," he corrected her. "That is a far cry from knowing the way into my home. You've nothing to fear, Christine."

With that he was leading her out onto the roof of the opera house. It was dark but it was a clear, cold night and the stars sparkled brightly in the sky.

She took a deep breath of the dry air. It was so damp in Erik's home that she had nearly forgotten how crisp the nighttime air could be. She smiled brightly, pulling her cloak closer around herself as she stepped forward, looking over the edge of the roof.

Strangely enough it was not as bittersweet as she had imagined it would be. She stood just where she had with Raoul on that night that had seemed so long ago. She had lost Erik's ring that night. She hadn't even noticed until the next morning. The panic had been terrible - she had been terrified of his wrath, of his anger.

It had seemed so very long ago, yet when she closed her eyes tightly enough she could remember it as clearly as if it had been the day before. She looked up at the imposing statue of Apollo, the God that kept a watchful eye over the opera.

"I was here that night," his words were quiet as he watched her.

"What?" "I was here, that night with your boy. Just there," he was pointing up at the base of Apollo's statue.

"So you heard…"

" _Horror… horror… horror…_ " he echoed just as he had that night.

She wrapped her arms around herself, a terrible guilt settling into her bones. "I thought that you were angry that I lost your ring… I had no idea."

"Hardly," he said softly.

"You were hurt," she said. Suddenly everything was making sense - his terrible anger, the rage that had seemed to come on so quickly. He had always had a temper but he had never been quite so neurotic, quite so unpredictable as he had been at the end of it all.

"Of course I was hurt, Christine. It is not so easy to hear the truth so bluntly put."

"I was frightened, Erik. It was not all so very truthful."

He sniffed under his mask, looking up at the stars as though looking for an excuse to end the conversation. And just then, when she looked down, she saw a glint of gold tucked into a wide crack in the concrete beside the statue.

She knelt on the cold ground, looking closely - and sure enough there it was. She worked hard at it, breaking it slowly from the place where it had become so tightly lodged. There was a long scratch on the face of it, no doubt caused by it's tomb within the stone.

"Erik…" He turned to look at her, finding her kneeling on the concrete with the ring in the palm of her hand, tears welling in her eyes. It was such an odd reaction but she had truly been devastated when she lost the ring. It was so much more to her than his rage; it was her angel, a strange memento of a past that she hadn't quite been ready to forget.

He was kneeling in front of her, gently wiping the tears from her face. "Why are you crying?"

She sniffled, blinking away the tears that she could manage to. He reached into his breast pocket, using his handkerchief to blot at her ridiculous eyes. She had always wondered why he carried one when he had no nose - it seemed he was simply more thoughtful than she could ever claim to be.

"I never thought I would see it again," she said.

He looked at her as though she were ridiculous. "It is only a ring, Christine. Had I known you missed it so very much I would have gotten you another just like it."

"It wouldn't have been the same - it wouldn't have been my ring," she said, pulling her wedding band off and slipping the plain engagement band onto her finger, sliding the wedding ring back on before she could lose it too.

"It's scratched," he pointed out.

"It's perfect," she argued.

"I never knew that it meant so very much to you," he said, his hand closing around hers as he examined the rings. He ran the tip of his finger over the scrape on the surface of the piece of jewelry, almost as though he was simply checking to be sure it was safe to wear.

"I cried for hours when I realized it was gone."

"I thought that you were just afraid of me," he said, looking at her closely.

"I was," she confessed. "That doesn't mean that the ring meant nothing to me - or that you did. You were so much to me for so long, I couldn't bear the thought of discarding the memories so easily."

"You were planning an elopement," he said flatly.

She bit her lip, looking down at the rings on her finger. "I don't know what I wanted, Erik. I didn't know then either. You frightened me so terribly, I didn't know what else to do."

He made no response, instead he boldly pulled her into his arms, pressing the lips of his mask into her hair.

"Are you ready to go home, Christine?" he murmured.

She nodded against him. "I'm ready now."


	8. Let the judges frown

Erik was in a terrible mood the very next day - something that concerned Christine, perhaps more than she was willing to admit. It was such an odd thing. She had thought that they had a fairly good day.

At first she thought that he was angry with her. He snapped at her early in the morning and then he closed himself into his music room, locking the door behind him.

If he wanted distance she would give him distance. She shut herself away into the library, searching for a book that she hadn't yet read. There were plenty that she had not yet perused, many of them that she never would due to their foreign language. Each time she looked over the selection she found herself wondering the same thing - had Erik truly read all of them? Did he know so many languages? Somehow it wouldn't have surprised her so very much to find out that he did. Even after knowing him for so very long he was ever shrouded in a strange air of mystery. He never spoke about his past and learning that he had even a single friend was more surprising to Christine than she thought was kind to admit.

The silent hours ticked by unbearably slowly. There was so little to entertain herself with in his home and she had to wonder if perhaps that had played some into his neurotic madness - surely so much silence and isolation was not good for anyone.

It wasn't until around lunch time that she finally gathered the courage to pester him. At least she assumed it was near lunch time due to the grumble of her stomach. She stood silently staring at the locked door before she finally knocked.

"Erik?" she ventured.

The only answer was silence.

She knocked twice more. "Erik, I'm sorry if I've made you angry but if you don't tell me what I've done then I cannot fix it." She was greeted by his stubborn silence. She wasn't sure whether she should be glad for that or if it would be better to be greeted by his temper. Even if he frightened her she would at least have some response. His silence only made her more weary.

Eventually she gave up, sitting on the floor and leaning her back against the door.

"I wish you would tell me what I've done to deserve such cruel quiet," she said to the wall across from her. "I can be just as stubborn as you if I choose to, though. I am not leaving this very spot until you come out Erik."

Her declaration was met with only quiet, something that shouldn't have surprised her but still made her heart ache all the same.

"You make me terribly anxious sometimes."

The feeling of the door moving out from behind her startled her and she fell backwards, not honestly expecting him to give in to her so easily, and she was caught by a cold hand against her back.

"You haven't made me angry," his voice sent a shiver down her spine as his hand slowly pulled away from her.

"Then why are you insisting on punishing me so?" she asked, pulling herself to her feet and crossing her arms as she turned to look at him.

"I am not punishing you," he snapped, crossing his own arms in a mirror of her. "I am simply thinking."

"You've been in a horrid mood all morning," she argued.

"I have," he admitted easily.

"Why?"

He sighed, his hand passing through his hair as he looked at her carefully. And then, suddenly serious, his shoulders tensed. "Your boy is ill, Christine," he admitted. "He is… terribly ill. He has been ill before - a sickly little thing - but until now it was nothing that I was not proficient enough to handle. I fear this time he is beyond my help."

"Oh," she said, her arms tightening around herself. He was looking at her so closely, so seriously and it made her only more anxious. "Well, what will you do?"

"I don't know," he admitted softly.

She bit her lip, considering his words carefully. "Well, you have to let him go," she said eventually.

"And have him go directly to the gendarmes," Erik said. He was frustrated, she could hear it in his voice, see it in the tenseness of his shoulders.

"He won't," she argued. "Erik, he will die if you don't let him get help."

When her hand fell on his arm he jerked away and suddenly she understood the hurt that she saw in his eyes every time she pulled away from him.

"If I let him go," he said slowly, "then I will lose you too."

She looked at him closely. It wasn't that he was angry - she realized that. He wasn't angry, he was terrified. Try as he may he couldn't hide it from her.

"Why would you think that?"

"What other reason do you have to stay?" his voice was sad, so terribly sad and it pulled at her heart.

"I gave you my word," she said softly. "I promised you I would stay. I am your wife, Erik."

He shook his head, his eyes closing with her words. "And you think that he would give up so very easily?"

This time when her hand found his arm he did not pull away. He simply stood stiff and still, staring at her hand on his arm. "Erik, do you trust me?"

"No."

She sighed, trying not to let his words hurt her so terribly much. "You have to trust me - you have to let me prove that you can. You have to take me to see him."

"I can't," he argued, his eyes not shifting from her grip on his arm.

"You have no choice," she said softly. "Do you think that I could forgive you for letting him die?"

He shivered, shaking his head slowly as his eyes slid closed.

"He will need proof," she continued slowly. "Proof that I am alive and well, proof that we are married." "The Madeleine," he said brokenly. "They will be confused, they will insist that they have no knowledge but they will find the document in their records."

"Will you take me to see him?" she asked softly. "Will you trust me?"

"It seems I have no choice," he breathed. When he opened his eyes they were full of unshed tears.

All she could do was tighten her hand on his arm, staring up at him as he realized that for the first time in his life, he wasn't the one in control.

It was a long and cold walk through the dark catacombs with Erik's tight grip on her arm. She wondered if he realized that she had caught on to the fact that he had walked her around the same loop three times - whether he did or not she made no comment on it, knowing how deeply conflicted he already was about the whole situation.

"Stop looking at me like that," she said, glancing up and catching his eye.

"Like what?" he asked, his voice low and timid. It was so odd to see him this way. He so rarely showed any emotion and to see him so terrified was a little startling to Christine.

"Like it is the last time you will ever see me."

"It very well could be," he argued dramatically.

"You and I both know that's not true," she sighed. "I am not stupid enough to believe that if I ran you wouldn't find me."

He made no attempt to argue with her, simply shifting his hand on her arm and leading her to the right, finally breaking away from the repeating loop. It was only fifteen feet down the hallway that he stopped, looking down at her.

"You promised me that I could trust you," he said softly.

"I did," she said. "And I also promised you that I would stay and be your wife. I've no intention of breaking any of those promises."

He stared at her carefully for a long moment, and then he was reaching out and pressing against the wall. A panel sprung open, cracking inward and she could see a faint flicker of light at the end of the tunnel.

"He is in there," Erik said, his eyes still on her. "Just know that he is very ill, Christine. He is running a high fever - he will not be himself."

She nodded at his words, swallowing dryly.

"I will wait for you here."

His eyes were so tormented, his back so incredibly stiff and she did the only thing that she could think to - she reached up and slid his mask out of the way, pressing her lips gently to his before she pulled away. She couldn't bear to look back as she made her way down the hallway; she had no desire to see the hurt and mistrust in his eyes, the weak fear that had taken such a strong hold of him.

Christine wasn't sure where she thought Erik had kept Raoul but she was surprised when she turned the corner into the little room. A makeshift bed was against the wall, blankets piled atop it and a candle flickered on the table at the foot of the bed, casting just enough light to see from wall to wall.

And there he was, slumped on the floor against the stone wall. Christine hardly recognized him. His hair hung wild and unkempt from his shoulders, a patchy beard covered his jaw. He was thin - so much thinner than he had ever been.

"Raoul," her voice quaked on his name but he lifted his head, his eyes settling on her. He was silent as he stared at her, looking almost as though he believed her to be a ghost.

She made her way slowly to him, half expecting him to leap up and half expecting him to run. Neither happened - he stayed perfectly still, his eyes following her as she approached.

Finally she knelt in front of him, looking at him carefully. "Erik tells me that you are ill."

"Erik," he echoed, his voice dry and flat, a humorless smile on his face. "Yes, Erik, Erik, Erik. He waits eagerly for my death - but I will not give it to him! No, I will not offer him the satisfaction! Do you hear me, Erik? Even here you cannot win!"

"Raoul," she said softly. His whole demeanor dropped at her voice.

"Do not torture me so," he said quietly.

"What are you talking about?" "You torture me!" suddenly he was building up again, his eyes shining with his excitement. "You come to me, you say 'oh, Raoul,' you promise me that you will free me! But you will not free me - I reach for you, I will reach for you and you will vanish. Do not torture me so."

She wasn't sure what state she had expected to find him in and she was suddenly glad that Erik had warned her of his fever. Only hours of silence in the dark corners of Erik's home was sometimes enough to drive her into near madness. Her heart broke for the shell of the man that she had loved so dearly.

"I am here," she said softly. "And I will free you, Raoul. But you must calm yourself."

His hand was raising slowly and she reached hers out. When the tips of his fingers found hers he collapsed into himself, a sudden sense of urgency flitting through his eyes.

"Christine," he breathed.

"It's me," she said, forcing a smile to her face. "I'm here."

"I'll kill him," he said it flatly, seriously, and she shivered at his words.

"You will do no such thing, Raoul. Do not play the fool."

His head fell weakly against the wall, his fingers closing around hers. They were warm, so very unlike Erik's and for a moment it was more unsettling than it was comforting. "I thought you were dead. He told me you were alive - every time I asked he told me you were but I didn't believe him, not for a moment. Yet here you are."

"I am just fine, Raoul," she said softly. "He never had any desire to hurt me."

"Why are you here?" his eyes were clear for the first time.

"Because you are ill," she said softly.

He shook his head at that. "He wouldn't bring you to me for that. Why are you here?"

She licked her lips - they suddenly felt so very dry. "I never got the chance to say goodbye to you, Raoul. I need to say goodbye."

"I'm going to die here." "No you're not," she argued, a humorless laugh leaving her lips. "You're going to leave, you're going to see a doctor. You are going to live life."

"He says that you married him," his voice was wavering on the words.

She bit the inside of her lip. "I did."

He looked at her so closely, his brow furrowing. "Do you love him?"

"I don't know," for the first time in her life she felt as though she was being truthful. Did she love him? She had no idea. Maybe she did - surely she felt something for him.

His eyes closed at that. "I can come back for you," his words were weak and empty, almost as though he knew the answer before he asked the question. "If you ask me to I will come back for you. I will save you."

"I've nothing to be saved from," she said softly. "If you come back he will kill you. I saved you once - I don't know that I would be able to a second time. The only reason you are still alive now is because he knows that I would never forgive him."

"You love him," Raoul said quietly. His tone wasn't accusatory, it was simply sad, a flat statement of fact. "You always have. I think I always knew that too. I didn't want to believe it - just like you didn't. Just like you still don't."

"I'm his wife," she said softly. "No amount of want will change that."

He nodded slowly, his eyes resting on the rings that adorned her finger. "Then this is goodbye, isn't it?"

"I think so," her tone was soft and sad.

"Tell me one thing."

"Anything," she said, trying so hard to decipher his expression.

"Did you ever really love me?" his eyes finally slid back to hers and they were so incredibly tired.

"Of course I did, Raoul. I have never lied to you - not purposefully at least. If things were different - if things were different I would have married you. If I had let you carry me off that night like you had asked I would be your wife."

He nodded, his fingers sliding away from hers as he huddled into himself, his body wracked by a shiver. "I wish you a happy marriage, for what that is worth."

"And I hope that you find the happiness that you deserve," she answered, pulling away from him as she stood.

He only gave half a nod, his eyes seeming to look through her as she stepped backwards. When she turned to walk away she resisted the urge to look back.

Erik did wait for her - at first she had not seen him, but there he was, sitting on the floor in much the same way as Raoul had, his head leaning against the wall and his knees pulled to his chest.

"Do you hate me very much?" he asked as he unfurled himself, standing beside her.

"No," she said, afraid that if she spoke any more than that she would lose the careful control she had over her voice.

When he reached for her hand she pulled away from him, trying her hardest to ignore the hurt in his eyes.

"Please don't," she whispered, her voice finally cracking. "Not just now, Erik."

Their walk home was a silent one.


	9. Be good to me I need you now

Erik was kind enough to tread carefully in the few days though at times it only served to irritate her more. She almost resented his sudden thoughtfulness - up to this point he had hardly seemed to care how his actions would affect her. His new hypersensitivity was almost too much, the way he tiptoed about their home as if only the slightest misstep would cause an upset.

She wasn't deranged, she was simply sad. At times she wished that he would reach for her hand again, that he would dare to pull her into his arms. The comfort would have been welcome but she couldn't blame him - not so terribly much.

Erik was a man who spent the majority of his life in solitude - how on Earth could she expect him to know the intricacies of comforting someone?

Yet the pitiful gaze that he fixed her with nearly drove her to madness. His guilt, his terrible sorrow. It was him that had begged for her pity, him that had sought so desperately after her compassion and now that he had it he acted as though it was more than he knew how to handle.

Perhaps that was simply what life was. Maybe that's what it was all designed to do - to drive you so fervently after something only to disappoint you when it was finally within your grasp. Sometimes she wondered if that was how he felt - terribly _disappointed_ by the place that he had found, _disappointed_ that his wife was not the perfect thing that he had insisted on creating in his own head.

Other times she wondered if it was simply all in _her_ head. If she convinced herself that she wasn't enough then maybe she wouldn't have to feel so terribly guilty about her own disappointment. Maybe when she curled up alone in bed at night and drew her knees tightly against her chest she would not have to feel so terrible about the nightmares that came to her, she would not have to feel so very wrong for longing for another man when her husband sat only just beyond the wall.

She was terribly resentful - that was nothing she would ever deny. Sometimes her bitterness caught her off guard, coming at the strangest times. When his fingers would twitch at his side, when he looked at her and she thought that perhaps this was it, maybe he would finally reach out to her - and it always left her so disappointed when he sighed, turning away from her.

As much as she resented him for it she was no better - she, too, was terrified to bridge the great void that had grown between them.

In her youth she had always been so terribly afraid of falling. When faced with an edge she would back away quickly. Even simply looking up at the catwalks was sometimes enough to make her dizzy and nauseous, imagining herself up there and the terribly long fall it would be to the stage.

It was similar in a way, only this fall was far more terrifying. She could not blame him so much for the image he had built up of her when she had done the very same to him. He had promised his love so thoroughly, he had filled her head with a fairytale of this ever growing love that was far too great for her to ever comprehend. In a way she was afraid to reach out to him. As much as she feared him, as much as she had tried to hate him, his rejection would crush her.

Instead she sat mousy and proper, playing at the image that she had in her head of what a wife was. She had no experience in that category and Erik was not the easiest man to learn with. She had never had a mother to teach her of wifely things - she had never been able to see the way that a marriage worked. Her mother died just after she was born and Mamma Valerias was old and brittle by the time Christine had found herself in her company.

Even though she would never admit it out loud, Christine was just as lost as Erik was, kicking desperately in an attempt to keep her head above water.

"I took him above today," Erik said slowly over dinner one night, breaking the awkward silence carefully. "I am sure it gave Carlotta quite a fright, finding him in her dressing room."

A ghost of a smile found her at that as she imagined it - the diva returning exhausted to her dressing room, the outrageously dramatic scream she surely would have let out at her discovery.

"That is good," she said softly. "He needs help - medical attention. I have never seen him so ill."

She could feel his eyes on her - that infuriatingly calculating look that he always gave her. She hated it. Hated the way that he inspected her, hated the way that he picked her apart so carefully like some specimen under a microscope. His eyes burned her, a terribly uncomfortable hum always settled just beneath the surface of her skin when he examined her that way.

"Please don't look at me like that," she finally whispered, fixing her eyes on her plate as she blinked back her tears. "I hate it when you do."

"Like what?" he asked, sounding truly taken aback.

"Like I am… like I am some _thing_ , like I am some puzzling object, some sort of unpredictable little experiment," she finally lifted her eyes, meeting his defiantly. "I do not like it."

He looked away from her, down at the surface of the table. "I am sorry," he said softly.

She wanted to scream, to hurt him, to fall to her knees before him and beg him for some shred of human touch, some scrap of affection.

Instead she wrapped her arms tightly around herself. "It's fine, Erik," she breathed, shaking her head. "It's all just fine."

"I don't know what to do," his words were quiet and measured, his eyes fixed stubbornly on the table. "You are so terribly sad. If I look at you it causes anger, if I reach for you you pull away. I do not know what to _do_ , Christine."

His frustration bit through his words, weaving icily around her heart in her chest and drawing her breath out with it. Was it wrong that she felt so terribly guilty? Sometimes she wondered if she deserved this strange turmoil. She wondered if they were ever meant for happiness. Once she thought she had found hers. She found it with a man far better than she would ever be, a man who lived in light and loved selflessly.

She had never been selfless. Everything she had craved had been with herself in mind - she was so terribly selfish. Even now she was selfish, so absorbed in her own self pity that she couldn't bear to think of the pain that she caused her husband. Her husband who did love her despite her insecurities, despite her terrible selfishness, despite her vanity.

He suffered terribly, her odd husband. If only he had chosen someone else to love - someone selfless and bright, someone that could match him in mind, someone that could return the love that he so freely gave. Someone that didn't hold such unreachable expectations of him. It wasn't her. If they'd ever had any chance for happiness it surely wasn't together. The more he tried the further they drifted apart. No matter what he did she was never able to accept it - it was never good enough. Could it ever be?

"You kept your promise to me, Erik. He is alive and safe and free. Everything is fine - it will all be just fine, won't it?" she looked up at him, wondering if she should feel guilty for her lies. How could she reassure him when she felt so terribly conflicted herself?

His fingers were gripping the edge of the table tightly. "Sometimes I wonder if I should have sent you away," his voice was quiet and even on his confession. "Perhaps some dreams are better kept just as dreams. I have never felt such hopelessness."

She swallowed dryly. As she stared at his mask she imagined his face beneath it - that terrible, twisted flesh that still caused her skin to crawl at the sight of it, those terribly dry and misshapen lips twisted into a contemplative frown.

"I think it is a bit too late for regrets," she answered hollowly. She wondered if he found it reassuring at all - knowing that she would keep her promise, that she would stand at his side as his wife. He shook his head slowly, his long finger dragging along the curved edge of the table. "Do you love me at all Erik?"

At that his eyes snapped to her, suddenly serious, lacking any of the pensive thoughtfulness he had seemed so caught in only a moment before. "What kind of a question is that?"

"A serious one," she said, biting her lip. "One that deserves a serious answer."

"I love you more than even my music," he said seriously, his sad eyes finding hers. "More than anything I have left upon this Earth."

She shivered under his gaze, trying to resist the pull of his voice, that terrible power that he seemed to yield over her with only the smallest movement of the muscles in his throat. It was terribly ironic to think that she could love him if only he were his voice - that mysterious and enthralling thing he had been to her. If he had only stayed the voice; that untouchable, inhuman thing that had captivated her so thoroughly. She had loved him then. She had loved his lie so deeply, so honestly, so innocently.

He was no angel, he was no demon. He was not some mystical being sent by God to bless her - he was simply Erik. It had all been so terribly disappointing, so anticlimactic an ending to the story he had crafted so carefully just for her.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, trying to wipe away the strange melancholia that had settled so deeply into her.

"I need you to be my husband," she said, her voice unrecognizable to her own ears.

"I am your husband," he said confusedly. "Perhaps not a good one, but I am your husband all the same."

She shook her head at that, picking at a loose string that she found on the sleeve of her dress as she attempted to avoid his eyes. "I need you to act like my husband," she said slowly, wondering how to put her thoughts into words, how to explain to him what it was that she so craved from him, how to explain the terrible loneliness that she felt.

"I don't understand," he said eventually, sounding utterly defeated.

She twisted the string around her finger, finally breaking it loose. "I am terrified," she said softly, ignoring the look that he gave her. "I am lonely, Erik. I am… lost. I do not know why it is you love me - I am terribly vain and selfish and stupid next to you - but if you do, I need you to be my husband. I can't - I can't keep doing this."

"You have never been stupid," he said disdainfully. "And if anyone is selfish in this whole mess it is me."

"You don't understand," she said, tears pricking at her eyes. "You don't understand - you can't. How could you?"

She heard the scrape of his chair against the floor, his slow footsteps as he came closer and closer, her heart racing in her chest with his slow and thoughtful approach. He knelt slowly in front of her chair keeping the careful distance between them as he looked up at her.

"I don't," he said soothingly. "I don't understand, Christine. You must tell me - you must explain it to me."

His hand was so close to hers, resting against the edge of the table. She couldn't put it into words, she couldn't explain herself when she hardly understood it herself.

Her fingers inched slowly across the table until finally, finally she pressed them over his. She heard his breath catch, she could feel his eyes on her - watching her, calculating, waiting to see what was to come. When his palm turned up under hers and his cold fingers finally wrapped around her hand she began to sob, pitching forward and pressing her face against his shoulder.

She did not mind so much when the chair lurched out from under her, when she found herself on the floor on her knees.

She supposed if she had been anywhere else, with anyone else, she would have been utterly embarrassed by her outburst. Raoul would have called her mad, would have pulled her from the floor and insisted that she was unwell.

Not Erik though. His trembling fingers simply found her hair, pulling her closer against him as he held her right there on the stone floor of the kitchen.

Erik would not call her mad. He would never dare to insinuate that she was less than of sound mind. He would never push her away and remind her that she must be proper. He wouldn't look at her like she was some wandering, lost little thing that must be coddled and lied to.

And for one long, fleeting moment as her husband held her and trembled on the terribly uncomfortable stone floor, she allowed herself to be content even as she cried.


	10. Pity me, I'm almost a human being

Erik was a terribly nervous husband but he did try. Since her outburst he had seemed so much more confident. He no longer tread as though his touch would revolt her. Instead he seemed fascinated by this new discovery - that he could dare to reach for her and she would not shudder, she would not cry out and flee from him.

She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised when she woke to find him standing in the doorway of her bedroom, anxiously pulling at his cravat. She was anyway.

There were nervous butterflies in her stomach as she watched him shift under her gaze.

"Erik?" she said, finally daring to break the thick silence in the room.

He made no answer, looking down at his feet as though she had scolded him. For a moment he looked as if he were going to say something and then, almost as quickly, thought better of it.

She sat up and looked at him closely, trying to calm her own heartbeat. She was sure he could hear it - it was so terribly loud in her own ears. "Erik, what is it?"

His eyes were unreadable when they met hers, shielded carefully. "I thought - but it is silly and I will not…"

Her brow furrowed. "What is it that you want?" she said it softly, careful to keep her voice gentle.

His whole posture fell, his shoulders sagging tiredly. "I - this was foolish." He shook his head, looking down at his feet at he spoke. "I thought that perhaps - maybe, if you did not object so thoroughly…"

"Erik," she answered gently, "if you do not ask for whatever it is you want then you will not get anything at all."

There was an air of nervousness about him and he shifted from foot-to-foot, twisting his hands together like a scolded child. "Perhaps Christine would not object - or -" he said, his voice seeming so young and nervous, almost childish as he shifted on his feet. "She would not mind it so very much if Erik - if he dared to sleep - to sleep just there."

She followed the path of his long finger, finding that he pointed to the overstuffed chair that sat in the corner of her room. It was such a silly thing that she would have laughed at him had he not been trembling so terribly.

"Erik," she said, biting her lip as she contemplated it. "Come here," she shifted slowly, shivering at the coldness of the sheets in her new place. She patted her hand gently against the space she had just vacated.

He walked so slowly. Even the tips of his fingers trembled and for a moment, just a moment, she wondered if he would refuse. Eventually, though, he sat nervous and stiff on the edge of the mattress.

"I would not make you sleep in a chair," she said coaxingly. "If you wish - if you want to sleep then you will sleep in a bed like any other husband."

It took her some time to coax him into laying beside her - he was such an incredibly nervous man, so very unsure and afraid. Sometimes she had to remind herself of what he was, this man that had been so isolated for so long.

And so when he finally laid beside her and allowed his eyes to close she twisted her fingers with his, squeezing his hand comfortingly.

He did not come to her every night after that, but occasionally he would slip into her room long after she had fallen asleep, laying just at the edge of the unoccupied space in her bed. He never reached for her, he never made any attempt to wake her but he trembled so terribly that it always did.

When he did wake her she would turn tiredly, finding his hand with hers. It was only then, when her fingers wrapped around his own cold set that the tremble seemed to cease.

It wasn't until the fourth time that he found his way into her bed in such a way that she dared to broach the subject, her fingers finding his in the heavy darkness.

"Erik?" she breathed softly into the quiet.

His answer was a hum, a simple acknowledgement that she had spoken.

"Have you been having nightmares?" His eyes glowed from the pillow beside her, just as guarded as they always were when he was at his weakest. "I have always had nightmares."

She dared to inch just the slightest bit closer to him. "Is that why you come here?"

His stubborn silence was all the answer she needed. Of course he wouldn't admit it. Erik hardly ever admitted his weakness. He had convinced himself, somewhere down the line, that all of this human emotion was needless for him. The only thing he would ever admit his weakness, and his feelings, for was her. He would hardly have ever admitted that he was really just afraid, that he was haunted by these nightmares that plagued him. She wondered if that was why he slept so rarely.

"It's alright to be bothered, Erik," she said softly. "Everyone has nightmares sometimes. Even I do."

His stubborn silence didn't break but his fingers tightened around hers as he rolled onto his side, fixing his eyes on her. His terribly sad, lonely eyes.

"When I was a little girl my papa would play for me when I had nightmares," she said, smiling gently as she curled onto her side too, looking straight back into his eyes. "He would always remind me that they were just dreams. Dreams can't hurt you, not really. Not once you wake up."

"I don't have nightmares here," he admitted with a whisper. "I don't know why it is, but here, near you - you chase them away. You make them stop."

"You don't -" she started, taking a quick breath to steel her nerves. "You don't have to wait until you have a nightmare to come here. You know that, right? You are my husband."

"I know," he breathed. "You are a good wife, Christine."

"Hardly," she argued, smiling at his words despite her own arguments against them. She bit her lip as she looked at him, pressing the tips of her fingers to his. "Will you do something for me, if I ask it of you?"

"Most likely," he answered slowly, "though I suppose it depends on what you ask. There is very little I wouldn't do for you."

She pressed her eyes closed - she could hardly bear to look at him, at the love deep in his eyes, at his contentedness. He loved her so thoroughly, even as she spurned him he loved her. It was so very unfair that she couldn't return his feelings. He deserved someone who did; he deserved love. He deserved to be taken care of, he deserved a wife even half as devoted and in love as he was. That much she truly did believe. "Will you hold me?"

There was a long moment of still silence. She wondered whether she should have asked - she hardly deserved his affection. If he refused her she wouldn't honestly be able to blame him. And yet she felt the mattress shift as he moved slowly.

"Is that what you ask of me?" his voice was strained and low. All she could do was nod silently. "Come here," he breathed.

She opened her eyes and shifted closer to him, only to find his arms open to her. When she pressed her temple to his chest he sighed, his arms wrapping around her. One of his hands stroked her hair in the most comforting of ways and his dry lips pressed gently to her forehead.

Despite the chill that lived in his touch there was something comforting in it, in being held by her husband. His heart thrummed steadily under her ear, it's strong beat bringing a comfort that she couldn't understand herself. She let her hand rest on his chest beside her head.

"Thank you," she whispered to him. His hand continued its gentle petting of her hair, pulling the strands back and out of her face. "Erik?"

"Hmm?"

"You are a good husband too," she admitted softly.

He said nothing but his hand moved away from her hair, pressing over hers on his chest. His breath caught as his fingers wrapped around hers. "I love you, Christine," he whispered after a long moment. "I know that you do not love me but you are a good wife, even if you do not think so."

"You love me," she said softly, "and so we are already better off than most of Paris' nobles, don't you think?"

His lips pressed to the crown of her head as he pulled her closer, his fingers tightening around hers. "I suppose we are."

She nodded against him, trying desperately to hold back the tears that she couldn't quite explain herself. "Will you come to bed tomorrow?"

"I will come to bed every night if you ask it," he answered, his thumb brushing against her wrist.

"And hold me?"

"Of course," he murmured to her.

"Erik?" she felt so small, so very frightened. It was ridiculous, really, the tears that began to leak from her eyes, the reassurance that she needed. It was hardly fair to ask him for reassurance when he was the only one who dared to even breath the word love - yet she needed it so desperately.

"What is it?"

"Thank you," she whispered, knowing that if she spoke any louder at all her voice would crack.

"For what?" he sounded honestly curious, his thumb continuing to stroke her wrist.

"For loving me."

He was silent for a long moment and then, eventually, he sighed. "You hardly need to thank me for something that I can't help," he said. "Loving you is - it's easy, Christine. It is letting go that would be hard - you do not need to thank me for my weakness."

She sniffled, curling against his side as her tears flowed.

His hand traveled up from her wrist and his thumb began to brush away her tears, just barely skimming against the skin beneath her eyes. "Why are you crying?" his question was low and quiet, full of concern, and it only made her cry all the more.

"I don't deserve your love," she mumbled, doing her best to control her voice as it shook with her tears. "I don't - I don't deserve you, Erik."

"You're right," he agreed gently, his thumb continuing to catch her tears as they fell. "You deserve far better."

The empty ache of her heart grew twofold at that; her guilt, her remorse, only grew exponentially with his kind words. "It's you that deserves more - that deserves better. You deserve - deserve a wife that loves you only half as much as you love me."

He was silent as he held her. His thumb continued to work at its vain attempt to dry her face, his other hand stroked her back so gently, so comfortingly. It wasn't until her tears finally began to stem that he spoke again. "You are the only woman I have ever wished to have beside me," he confessed, his voice low and even. "I am not naive, Christine. I know that you do not love me - how can any woman be expected to love a monster? I do not need you to love me."

"You're not a monster," she argued, her throat rough and dry.

"That is precisely why I love you," he said softly. "Because I _am_ a monster; I am a monster in ways that reach far beyond my appearance. But you let me be human; you allow me to be human even if only for a moment. You are kind and gentle and compassionate. I wouldn't dare to let myself dream of more than that."

It was her turn to sigh now, pressing her ear to his thin, cold chest. Was it wrong that his words inspired her empathy? Was it wrong for her to feel anything for him at all? Surely she was mad. Still, the steady beat of his heart and the sound of each breath that he took comforted her, his arms wrapped so loosely around her made her crave something that she didn't quite understand. He was not a monster. She decided that as she listened to his heart, the steady beat that matched any other. He was a man, just a man. Perhaps he wasn't a good man but he loved her.

And maybe, if she only let it be, that could be enough.


	11. Maybe both of us just want to be ruined

Christine did her best to tread carefully where Erik was involved. He had grown restless and weary, sometimes pacing along the wall of his music room as though he were a caged animal. If she dared to say that it didn't make her nervous she would have been lying. If she dared to say anything he did didn't make her nervous she would have been lying.

She determined to bringing him his tea in what she had declared to be early afternoon. She had no way of telling what time it actually was. Once that may have bothered her - now she simply did her best to not think about it. It didn't matter anyway, not really, not when her world consisted of endless night. There was no point in trying to trace the passage of time when she had no sun to seek out anyway.

Lighting the samovar had proved to be a talent she lacked. She wasted match after match as she attempted to find the right spot in the intricate design of it's base - it was only after her sixth match that she found the little hinged door and suddenly she was grateful for Erik's self imposed solitude; she already felt stupid enough without his gaze on her, looking as though he were trying to decide whether to laugh at her or scold her.

She lit the coal easily, rolling her eyes as she shut the compartment and moved the whole contraption onto a tea tray. Two teacups, one small bowl full of sugar, one small cream pitcher and two spoons - one for the sugar and one for her tea. Erik always took his tea plain - and scolded her for the sugar in hers.

 _It will ruin your voice._

He took the tray from her at the door of the music room, setting it carefully on the end table.

"You should not be carrying this," he scolded, bidding her to sit on the sofa in the music room. "It is heavy and if you slip you will burn yourself."

She gave a halfhearted shrug, opening the valve on the samovar and filling one cup, handing it to him before she began on her own. "You've had yourself shut away in here for hours," she said, glancing up at him as she stirred her tea. "I've been worried about you."

He sat cautiously beside her, his hands wrapped around the steaming cup. "You should not worry for me."

"I do anyway," she said, glancing at him over the rim of her teacup.

He looked thoughtful for a moment as he stared into his tea, watching as the steam rose and twisted in on itself in the cold, damp air. "I want to take you somewhere."

"Like a vacation?" she asked, perking up just the slightest bit as she remembered their conversation that seemed so very long ago.

"No," he said softly. "Although I suppose you could consider it such - do you still crave the sun, Christine?"

"I do," she answered cautiously, watching him closely as he stiffened just the slightest bit at her words.

"Of course you do," he sighed, setting his cup on the end table and turning to look at her. "I want to take you somewhere where there is sun."

She nodded slowly, trying her best not to flinch when his hand found her knee, resting there cold and gentle.

"It is not a vacation, not really," he said slowly, as though he were doing his best to choose his words carefully. "I want to take you to Perros."

"Perros," she echoed, wondering if she had heard him right.

He nodded slowly. "You visit your father's grave twice a year - up until now, at least. I will not deny that my behavior has been rather… ungentlemanly. I stole your last visit from you. I've been terribly selfish. I would like to take you to Perros; I would like a chance to do this right, to let you have an uninterrupted visit."

"Oh," she answered, unsure what else to say in answer of his plea. Perros? Last time she had been in Perros it had been with Raoul; he had shaken her by the shoulders and insisted that there was no Angel. She was sure she knew that - even then she was sure she did, but her willful ignorance and blind hope had been far too strong to admit it even to herself.

"If you do not want to go -"

"No, Erik," she said softly, cutting him off as she forced herself to smile at him. "I do, I want to go. I want to go to Perros with you."

He was looking at her so closely, as though he were searching for some sense of dishonesty, some hesitation that would give her away. "I will travel with you," he said slowly. "But I will not intrude. I will give you privacy there, at his grave. I will not steal it from you again."

She set her own teacup to the side, finding his hand on her knee and forcing her fingers under his. "I will show you where I grew up," she said with a soft smile. "The shop with the keeper that used to sneak me sweets when papa was distracted, the sea. We can make it into a vacation."

"Is that what you want?" he asked, giving her that same frustratingly scrutinizing look. "Do you want to share those things with me, Christine?"

She worried her lip as she looked straight back at him, contemplating it. Did she want to share those things with him? She had shared them with Raoul. She had loved Raoul, she had seen a future with him. He knew her and she knew him and it had seemed natural. Even if she did not love him as she loved Raoul he was her husband. It seemed only natural to share those things with the person she had committed her life to. "You are my husband."

"I am," he confirmed, his fingers finally curling around hers. "That doesn't mean that you want to share those things with me - that doesn't mean that I deserve for you to share those things with me."

"You are my husband," she repeated, the phrase growing firmer along with her resolve. "That means that we've made promises. I have vowed to stand beside you - you have vowed to care for me. This is our future, together. You are my husband and I want to share those things with you - I have to."

"We never made any vows," he answered, his eyes flicking over her face as though he were searching for something. His gaze was softer now, caught somewhere between hope and disbelief. The hope she saw in his eyes sometimes made her nervous and this was no exception.

"I, Christine Daae -" she began softly, her lips pulling themselves into a sad smile "- take you, Erik, for my lawful husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part."

His breath caught and his eyes slid away, down to where their hands rested entwined in her lap. "Why are you so kind to me?" he whispered.

She reached out with her free hand, letting it rest cautiously against the side of his mask. "Because you are my husband," she answered. "Perhaps it is not what I've dreamt, or what you have, even, but you are my husband and I am your wife. There is no use in holding on to the anger anymore, or the hurt. There's no use in it. I don't want to hold on to it anymore, Erik. I do not want to hurt you anymore."

"Do you mean that?"

She nodded slowly. "I mean it. It doesn't mean that it won't be difficult. It doesn't mean that I love you. It just means that I am ready to try. I am ready to try to be a proper wife to you - I am ready to try to love you."

"Do you think that you could-" he faltered here, pausing as he searched her eyes. "That you could love me?"

"I could try to," she answered carefully. She always did her best to tread carefully with him, always tried not to make promises when she was not sure she could keep them, to not incite the desperate hope that still lived within him. She couldn't bear his disappointment, seeing that deep, soul crushing sadness that it would bring with it. His cracking soul was far too much to shoulder, the painful disappointment that always came with the end of his hope.

"I have a surprise for you in Perros," he said slowly. "I hope that you will like it - I think that you will."

"I'm excited to see it," she answered with a smile.

"I do love you."

"I know that you do," she answered softly. "And I do care for you, Erik. Even if I cannot say that I love you, I care about you deeply. I do not want you to be in pain anymore."

When he pulled her tightly against him she did not complain. She was absently grateful that she had set her teacup down as she wrapped her arms around him in return, her fingers gently stroking his hair.

He had held her as she cried and she supposed it was only right that she return the favor. She held him close, not even complaining as the shoulder of her dress grew damp with his tears, not even complaining for his tight grip on her.

She did not shush him, she did not speak. Instead she silently pressed her lips to the crown of his head as she held him close and rocked him like a child. It was the only thing that she could offer him for comfort. There were no words to scratch even the surface of his pain, there were no apologies that she could offer him, no reassurance that she could openly offer.

So she said nothing instead, wondering if they would ever be able to move past this strange place they found themselves in, if this war of self pity, grief and regret could ever possibly have a happy ending for either of them.


	12. I will be a hero, so will you

Travel with Erik was surprisingly unconventional.

They left in the dead of night, creeping out into the darkened streets like fugitives. It wasn't so very out of place, she supposed. Erik certainly was a fugitive and being by his side, wearing his ring, she was sure it did implicate her to a certain extent.

He had selected her outfit carefully - a dark dress, black stockings. He had even wrapped her in one of his own cloaks, which now dragged on the ground behind her due to their vastly different heights. He had gone so far as to cut her hair, snipping her curls shorter as he lamented over it. She would wager that he was far more upset about the whole ordeal than she would ever be - besides, she had grown fond of the shorter cut. It was freeing, in a way. She felt lighter.

Explaining that did nothing to soothe his own grief, nor did it stem the apologies that he gave every time his eyes settled on her.

"Do you hate it?" she finally whispered to him as they made their way through the dark and empty streets, her hand tucked beneath his arm.

"Hate what, Christine?" he asked, glancing over at her from beneath his ridiculously low hood.

"My hair."

"Hardly," he supplied as he led her around a corner. "I simply liked your long hair."

"Well, I like it," she said, her hand shifting on his arm. "Does it look bad?"

"No," he answered, not even bothering to look at her. "You are just as beautiful with short hair as you are with long."

Something about his simple reassurance made her smile and she leaned just a bit harder against his side, resting her temple against his shoulder as she sighed. "Are we going to walk all the way to Perros?" she complained.

He paused, turning to look at her as though she were the oddest thing he had ever seen. "Do you think that I would make you walk all the way to Perros?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I wouldn't doubt that you'd do it."

He laughed at that, shaking his head as he began to lead her through the streets again. "I will not make you walk all the way to Perros," he promised. "The fact that you think even I could make a journey that far on foot only proves that your faith in me is a bit too high - no, we will only walk as far as Versailles. There we will hail a carriage."

"That is an expensive trip by carriage, Erik."

He glanced at her and she only just managed to make out the line of his lips pulling into a smile beneath the cut of his mask. "I am a rather wealthy man, Christine. I can afford a trip or two."

"Wealthy through extortion," she reminded him.

"I have worked rather hard to build the opera to the place it has found itself at," he said defensively. "But if you choose to call it extortion that is fine - I call it a salary myself. Most working men have one. Whatever you choose to call it does not change the fact that at a base rate I am making two hundred and forty thousand francs a year. Which, by my calculation, should be just enough to get us to Perros and back."

She rolled her eyes at his absurdity, leaning against him. "A base rate," she repeated, glancing up at him. "Does that mean that the great Opera Ghost has a resume that extends beyond haunting?"

"Shush," he reminded her, pulling at the hood of his cloak. "And it just so happens that opportunity arises on occasion. I am an architect of sorts. You would be surprised how many men are intrigued by the prospect of a design made by a mysterious man they have never met."

"You've never told me that," she murmured.

"You never asked."

She wasn't sure why his simple explanation weighed so heavily on her. It was true enough. She had never asked after his talents. There was something about him so shrouded in mystery that sometimes it was hard to tell what questions she should ask and which were better left unanswered. Either way his words hit her hard, drawing the breath from her lungs and filling them with heavy guilt.

"Do you enjoy being an architect?" she tried, breathing around the heavy lump that had lodged tightly in her chest.

"I enjoy creating beautiful things," he answered softly. "Buildings, music, art. It is all one in the same, in a way."

"Only beautiful things?"

He nodded slowly, his hand resting over hers in the crook of his arm. "Life is full of beauty - perhaps it doesn't always seem like it, but I see it."

She couldn't help but to gaze up at him. For the first time in a long time she wished that he would strip his mask off, let her see more than his top lip and a sliver of his eyes, let her see him fully and completely. If only she could see him then maybe she would be able to make sense of it - make sense of him. They had known each other for so long - but she still didn't know him, not really. She had no idea what it was that shaped him into the man he was today. She could imagine it, but she didn't know. For the first time she felt like she truly wanted to know him.

"Erik?"

"Hmm?"

"Will you tell me about your mother?"

He sighed, looking down at her. "I always knew that this would happen - I had hoped that it was further off, but I knew that it would come one day."

"I want to know," she argued. "I want to know you."

"Of course you do," he said, his lips setting into a grim line. "Because you think that if you only knew me - if you could understand - then you could find some redeeming quality, some thing hidden deep inside of me that would let you look on me with something more than pity, that could make you feel less guilty if you did love me. There is no deep-seeded, secret thing that will redeem me, Christine."

She rolled his cufflink between her fingers as they walked on in silence, daring to glance over at him only so often. And then she took a deep breath. "I never knew my mother," she said, the words shaking. "She died just after I was born - it was an infection. My father loved me, dearly, but sometimes I think he must have resented me terribly for taking her from him."

Erik sighed, keeping his eyes carefully trained on the sidewalk in front of them. "That is utterly ridiculous, Christine. I highly doubt that he ever blamed you for her death."

"I still think he must have, somewhere deep down. What about your mother?"

He huffed, looking up at the sky. Christine followed his gaze, tracing the stars in the sky.

"My mother was very beautiful -" he said with a resigned sigh "- much like you; perfect skin, long blonde curls. Her eyes were brown, though. Sometimes I thought that there must be some doll modeled after her somewhere out there."

Christine looked over at him, realizing that his eyes were trained on the sidewalk in an active effort to avoid her looking into them. She did not push him.

"She was also very cruel. I did not understand why it was that she hated me so much until I was a bit older and I caught sight of myself in a mirror. I honestly believed, for a few brief years, that my life was perfectly normal. I thought that all children had to wear burlap over their faces - I did not question it when she locked me away in the attic in the middle of summer, when she put bars on the windows and beat me for daring to press my face close to the glass in an attempt to find some relief."

Her fingers tightened on his arm. It wasn't necessarily the story that he told that caused her stomach to churn - it was the way he said it, the way that he seemed to be completely devoid of emotion. It was a simple statement of fact and she had to wonder if he had ever spoken it aloud to anyone at all.

He halfheartedly shrugged one shoulder, finally looking over at her. "There is not much more to tell about Madeline."

"What happened to her?"

"I could hardly answer that question if I wanted to," he said, looking at her carefully. "I left when I was very young and I never went back."

She bit her lip, looking down at her hand. Her pale skin made a striking contrast to his dark sleeve and she shifted her hand, watching her fingers disappear into the extra black fabric.

"It's still pity," he murmured. She could feel his eyes on her but she did not look up at him. "I could tell you every trauma I've endured and it would still only be pity. I do not need your pity, Christine. I haven't told you these things because I do not want you to look at me like I am some kicked dog. I do not want you to fix me; that is a project that no one is equipped to take on."

She looked up at him sadly. "What is it that you want, Erik? You do not want my pity, you claim to not need my love. What is it that you want from me?"

"I don't know," his confession came on an empty breath. She wasn't even sure that he had meant for her to hear it. He looked down at their feet, shaking his head just the slightest bit. "I want you to be my wife."

"I already am," she answered patiently, trying so hard to decipher him.

His next breath was a choked sounding thing and he nodded. "I want you to stand beside me."

"I do," she said softly. "Erik, I am your wife. I promised to stand beside you - I am not going anywhere."

He nodded, glancing sideways at her. "That is what I want," he answered calmly, his breathing slowly settling back to evenness. "I want you as my wife, beside me. I want you to promise that you are not - that you will not leave. That is what I want from you."

There was a brief moment of clarity for Christine; he was starved. It was true enough that pity was not what he sought, nor was it simply love; though she doubted he would be adverse to it. He was lonely. Much as he may have tried to deny it he was broken and terrified. Christine had never been truly alone, not even after her father's death, and she had to wonder how very terrible and lonely it would have been.

She planted her feet, tugging on his arm until he halted in his step. "Look at me, Erik," she whispered.

He obliged, hesitatingly lifting his eyes to hers.

"I will not make you promises I cannot keep; I will not ever promise you anything that I am not sure I can give," she said, looking up into his sad eyes. How terrible they were, those unnatural, glowing, yellow things. "I cannot promise that I will love you. I cannot promise that I will not fight with you. I cannot promise that we will always be happy - I cannot even promise that we will ever be happy." He blinked at her, tilting his head as though only looking at her from a different angle was the key to solving some secret puzzle.

"I can promise, though, that I am never going anywhere. I can promise that no matter how bad things get, or how good, you will always be able to find me in the morning. I can promise that you will see me every single night before you go to sleep - I can promise that for the rest of our days I will be there to hold you and chase every nightmare away. I can promise that I will stay."

He nodded slowly, his eyes slipping from hers. When his hand found hers and his fingers pressed between hers she could do nothing but follow him.

Their walk from there was silent - she didn't even bother pointing out the tears that fell beneath his mask.


	13. I guess if I'm breathing

Christine wasn't sure when exactly her head had come to rest against Erik's shoulder. She wasn't even sure when exactly she had fallen asleep. All she knew was that she had, it did, and he didn't seem to mind it in the slightest.

She sat up slowly, stretching carefully. There was a terrible ache from the angle her head had come to rest at and she rubbed at her bleary eyes.

The curtains were tightly drawn on both sides of the little carriage, shutting out all of the light. She pulled the curtain open just the slightest bit, blinking and pulling it closed again when she realized how very unused to the sunlight she was.

"How long did I sleep?"

"Only a few hours," he answered, staring at the curtain on his side of the carriage as though he could see straight through it. "You should sleep a bit longer - I am sure you are tired."

He was stiff. He was always stiff but there was something in his demeanor that she hardly recognized, a nervousness that she couldn't quite place. "Erik?"

"What?"

"Is something wrong?" she asked, watching the way he avoided looking at her, the way his fingers tapped against his knee and his shoulders stiffened.

He sighed, finally looking toward her with carefully guarded eyes. "Nothing is wrong, Christine," he answered patiently. "Everything is just on track and we should even be there before sunset."

She nodded. Something was wrong, though, she knew that. She could see it in his rigid posture, in the way he still avoided her gaze, in the nervous, staccato dancing of his elongated fingers against his bony knee. Erik was Erik, though, and no amount of wheedling would ever force him to confess what he did not want to. That was something that she had learned rather easily. Arguing, continuing to question it, would only serve to irritate him.

Instead she slid just a bit closer on the uncomfortable wooden bench, leaning her temple against his terribly bony shoulder just as she had when she was sleeping. "Will you wake me when we are there?"

"I will," he answered, relaxing just the slightest bit against her.

She nodded, attempting to stifle her yawn. He was not wrong; she was utterly exhausted. Christine was unused to nighttime travel and the sleeplessness had weighed heavily on her. She would never understand the way that he could push through day after day without ever so much as resting his eyes. Perhaps there really was something just a bit inhuman in him. She would have argued that he was just as tired, that it was simply a bad habit and nervousness that lended to his sleepless nights but she wasn't sure that she had ever seen him so much as yawn.

He had done better recently, though. He came to bed every night, curling up on his side and holding her close against him. Still, she had never actually seen him sleep. She wondered if she ever would or if he would constantly remain this strange enigma.

She did not ask. Instead she reached out, closing her fingers around his to still their aggravated movement and leaning heavier against him, shutting her eyes and drifting back into a restless sleep.

She drifted in and out of sleep, growing frustrated with the uncomfortable seat and her husband's lack of softness. His shoulder did not make for a particularly supple pillow and by the time he finally did make an effort to wake her the ache in her neck was so great that she wasn't sure she would be able to move at all without a terrible shooting pain.

"Christine, we are here," he said gently, his thumb stroking the back of her hand that was still closed over his. "You must wake or you will not sleep tonight."

She moved slowly, trying not to grimace with the terrible pain of her neck, and forced herself to smile tightly. "I think that I would be able to sleep on the floor just about now," she said dryly, pulling her hand away from his to knead her neck in an attempt to soothe her thoroughly knotted muscles.

He pushed the door open on his side of the carriage, chuckling as Christine quickly covered her eyes with her forearm. "I promise you a mattress," he said, closing the door and making his way to her side of the carriage.

He pulled open her door, holding his hand out. She slipped hers into his open palm, squinting as she stepped out into the grass. "It's terribly bright," she complained.

"I thought you missed the sun," he answered, his hardly visible lips pulling into a smile beneath the hood he had pulled low yet again.

She huffed, crossing her arms. "I do," she argued defensively. "I simply forgot how bright it is - you look utterly ridiculous, Erik."

His thin shoulders shrugged beneath his far-too-heavy cloak and he offered her his arm. "Ridiculous or not, it is best to be safe."

She slipped her arm through his and looked up at him. From this angle she could see under his hood and into his eyes. It was still there, that strange nervousness, but she chose not to comment on it. "You are going to make people uncomfortable."

"I already do," he said, looking at her carefully. "I would rather they think me eccentric than a criminal - not that either assumption would be so far off. Besides, it seems you are willing to be seen with me just this way."

She was half tempted to remind him that she had no choice in the matter. Instead she simply huffed, gripping his wrist beneath his cloak. "It is getting late. Are we going to stop at the inn?"

He shook his head, leading her down an overgrown path. "I told you that I had a surprise for you - I would much rather get that out of the way first."

The hope of a warm bath slipped away from her so quickly. "But they will be booked if we wait too long."

"Let me worry about that," he said, glancing over at her. "You will have a warm bed, Christine. You've nothing to worry over."

It wasn't worry, really. Rather it was a desperate wish for a bath, for a soft pillow and thick curtains to block out the sun that was already giving her a headache. Perhaps she should have despaired at that realization; instead she only felt a dull apathy toward the thought. It seemed only natural that so many days without sunlight would cause it to be harsh to her eyes. "What is this surprise, Erik?"

"I would much rather show you than tell you."

She sighed, resigning herself to playing along with him. In the end he always won. That thought was not quite as discouraging to her as it had been in the past. "What about a hint?"

"A hint?"

She nodded, looking over at him. "Surely you can give me a hint. Surprises make me nervous."

He laughed at that. "My surprises make you nervous, you mean. I assure you that this surprise is accompanied by neither a noose nor a coffin."

"Was that my hint?" she asked, unable to hide her smile. Sometimes he was simply so absurd that she couldn't help her amusement.

He looked at her sideways, his stiffened shoulders loosening just the slightest bit as his eyes met hers. "I should think it was."

"Is it going to be a terribly long walk?"

He shook his head. "I promise you are nearly done walking. Would you like me to carry you?"

The oddest part was that she knew his offer was genuine. If she said yes she knew that he would lift her without a second thought. A masked man in an oversized cloak with a hood pulled ridiculously low carrying a young blond girl through the streets - yes, she was sure that would accomplish his goal of being as unnoticed as possible. "No," she said. "Thank you though."

They walked mostly in silence, Erik glancing nervously at her every so often as though he needed to reassure himself that she was still there. Each time she forced herself to smile at him. He would not tell her what it was that made him so unbearably nervous but that did not mean that she couldn't offer him as much reassurance as she knew how to.

"There," he said, pointing up a steep hill and toward the cliff's edge. "That is where we are going."

Her brows knitted together as she looked up the hill. "That was my father's house."

"I know," he answered.

"And my surprise is there?"

"It is."

A million thoughts went through her mind as they made their way up the hill, none of which she dared to voice. She wondered what he possibly could have done - had he burned the house down in some misguided attempt to help her to move on? No, Erik would not be quite so callous to her. Perhaps he had done some work on the house. Last time she had been there she had seen the shutter that had fallen off of the second floor window resting in the grass - she doubted that was the only problem with the house. It was a fairly dilapidated house, it had already been in poor shape when she lived in it.

She wasn't sure how she felt about that, Erik working on the house - it seemed so bizarre that she couldn't quite picture it, him out in the sun with a hammer in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. Still, as absurd as it was it wasn't a terribly unwelcome image. A bit of domestication would fit him well.

As they reached the top of the hill, though, she saw that both of her guesses were wrong. The house still stood, just as dilapidated as it always had been. The paint was faded and the shutter still laid untouched in the grass. The steps of the porch had begun to rot, looking terribly dangerous at this point.

"I don't understand," she confessed, looking up at him.

He pulled away from her, looking up toward the rotting porch. "Last year you came here," he said, staring as though he could still see her sitting on the porch. "You sat just there and cried."

"I did," she agreed, watching the way he nervously shifted from foot to foot.

"You looked in the windows. You thought that someone may be living here," he continued in that same odd way, his eyes still trained on the porch.

She stepped forward, grasping his arm. "Erik, I still don't understand."

He finally looked at her, the nervousness plain in his eyes. "It's yours."

"What?"

"The house, it is yours," he said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a paper, holding it tightly in his hand. "If you want it."

"I still don't understand," she said softly.

He unfolded the paper, holding it out to her and she let go of his arm, taking it from him. "I bought it," he said as she stared at the paper in her hands. "A year ago, I bought it. I hadn't intended on this - on bringing you here. I never meant to tell you, but - I couldn't bear the thought of you coming here and it being gone." He shifted nervously, stooping over just the slightest bit as he tried to look at her. "It is yours, Christine, to do whatever you choose with. To keep, to stay in, simply to cry on the porch, to sell."

It was a property deed, his name scribbled in that familiar childish hand. She traced his signature with the tip of her finger. "Have you gone in?"

"No," he said softly. "I've never even set foot on the porch. I have taken more than enough from you."

She finally looked up from the paper in her hands. "You bought it," she said disbelievingly.

"I bought it," he confirmed.

She nodded slowly, looking back at the deed and then back up at him. "Do you have the key?"

He gave half a nod, reaching into his breast pocket and producing the familiar key, holding it out to her in just the same way he had the deed.

She took it gently, running her thumb over the worn brass. It was not as heavy as she had remembered it being - a testament to just how young she had been when her father died. She still remembered the day he had handed her the key. He had been too weak to leave his bed at that point and asked her to go to the market. "Thank you," she whispered, making an attempt to blink back her tears.

"You've nothing to thank me for," he said carefully. "Go inside, Christine. Take your time."

She only made it to the second step on the porch before she froze, staring at the chipped blue door. The last time she had gone through the door had been the day after her father died. She had been afforded only half an hour to pack her belongings and say goodbye to the only home she had ever known. In all her life she had never believed she would step foot in the house and now that she held the deed in one hand and the key in her other it seemed far too much.

She looked over her shoulder at Erik, who stood on the lawn in his ridiculous outfit. His hood was pulled far too low. He was practically swimming in his cloak - she wondered whether any of his wardrobe truly fit him. He stared down at his feet as though he were determined to give her privacy.

"Erik," she said softly. He looked up at her slowly and she passed the key into her other hand, holding her newly empty hand out to him. "Come with me, please."

"You want me to?" he sounded so incredibly small - he looked so incredibly small from where she stood. So frail and nervous, thin and guilty.

She nodded slowly, stretching her hand out. "Please," she whispered. "Come with me, I can't - not alone. Please come with me."

When his thin fingers slipped into her hand she felt relief that she hadn't even known she was seeking.


	14. Turn the glass into stars

Erik hung back when she finally dared to walk through the door and into the bare, dark entryway. There was a thick coating of dust on the edges of the trim and spiderwebs clouded the corners of the room. She couldn't quite tell by looking at them whether they were inhabited or not, but the sight of them still caused her to shiver, looking back at Erik where he stood leaning against the door frame.

"I'm here," he said softly when her eyes met his.

She ran her finger over the dingy wallpaper, finding that the dust did not end at the trim. "It's terribly dirty," she said, her voice shaking on the words.

"It's to be expected," he answered. "The house hasn't been inhabited in many years."

She peeked through the first open doorway, finding the parlor empty aside from the small loveseat that her father had hated, insisting it was far too feminine for his taste. "Has anyone else…" "No," he said, stopping her before she could get her question out. His approach was silent, his hand so gentle when it came to rest on her shoulder. "You were the last to live here - you and he."

She reached up, finding his hand and covering it with hers as she sighed. "I wonder why."

He was so close to her that she could feel his shrug. "Superstition does not end at the doors of the theater - I don't doubt that it played a hand."

"My father hated that loveseat," she said, smiling as she remembered the way he had refused to use it. "He insisted that it was a drain on his masculinity."

His thumb was occupied in drawing tight circles over the fabric of her sleeve. "It is rather pink," he agreed.

His voice was warm, the only warm thing about him. She leaned back against him, closing her eyes. "Can we stay here tonight?"

"We do not yet know if there is even a bed," he began slowly, his forefinger boldly tracing along her jaw. "And as I recall you were rather concerned about having a bed."

She tilted her head back, looking up at him. "What if we find a bed, can we stay then?"

His eyes scanned the room in front of them, sweeping over the corners and the dust coated window sill before he looked down at her. "This place is filled with spiders."

"You'll put them out -" she pleaded softly, slipping away so that she could turn and truly look at him "- just like you do at home when you think I am not looking. So long as they are outside it will not bother me so terribly."

"If you wish to stay, we will stay," he said simply, looking down at her with a shrug. "Whether there is no bed or a thousand spiders. If it will make you happy then we will stay."

She worried her lip as she looked up at him and then, slowly, she reached for his hand. "Can I show you something?"

He nodded only the slightest bit, following behind her easily.

How strange it was to lead him for once. She had followed him for so long that the realization that she was the one leading him was intimidating. It was right, though. There was something so perfectly right in the moment, in the way that he silently trailed behind her up the narrow staircase that she had run up and down in her youth, in his quiet thoughtfulness.

At first she had feared that it would feel so terribly wrong to bring him here. Even when she had promised that she wished to share her memories with him she had her doubts, wondering how very awkward and uncomfortable it would be, wondering if she even wanted him to know her in that intimate way - the way that Raoul had.

It was not so terrible as she had feared it would be.

She pushed the door at the end of the hallway open on it's creaking hinges. "This was his music room," she said quietly, letting go of his wrist and walking across the nearly bare room to pull the heavy curtains open.

The sunlight was filtered through the thick layer of dust on the window. Once she may have found that disheartening - now it only seemed right, playing perfectly into her own muddled emotions.

The piano was still there, much to her relief, covered by a heavy sheet. "I'm sure it's out of tune."

He stood frozen by the door, looking at her as though she were a predator.

She sighed and stepped forward, pulling the heavy sheet away from the instrument. It looked much the same as it had then - black and shiny, the keys only yellowed the slightest bit. She ran her fingers over the curved edge of its body. "When he was not playing his violin, he was playing this," she said, relieved to find that the memory caused her to smile instead of cry.

"It's a beautiful piano," he offered, looking at her carefully.

"Do you think - do you think it's salvageable?"

He looked at it carefully, taking only a few steps closer as his eyes swept over the instrument. "I couldn't say without looking inside. The outside looks well cared for."

"Will you look?"

He stared at her for a long moment and then he hesitantly stepped forward, letting his long fingers brush against the keys. "May I?"

She nodded, stepping away from the instrument.

He pressed the keys cautiously and then he glanced over at her, sitting on the small neglected bench with a flourish. With one hand he began to play, three slow notes again and again. One more glance toward her and his second hand came to find the piano.

She had been right, it was terribly out of tune. His rendition of Moonlight Sonata was still clear through the muddled notes but the dissonance was obvious, the notes clashing unnaturally in her ear.

As suddenly as he had begun to play he stopped, his fingers caressing the piano gently. "With a proper tuning I've no doubt that it would be as good as new."

"Will you tune it?"

He looked up at her and, seeming to read the hopefulness in her eyes, he sighed. "Have you any idea where the key might be?"

"The key?" her brow furrowed with the question.

"The key," he said, his explanation muddled. "It's a small metal piece - like a key, the tuning key. It would likely have a wooden handle."

She pulled the lid of the piano open carefully, reaching into the back of the instrument just as she had watched her father do when she was young. And there it was, tucked into a space she was sure it had no business being in. She held it out to him triumphantly. "This?"

"Exactly that," he said, taking it from her gently. He stared at it in his hands for a long moment and then he looked back to her. "I will tune the piano but you must be patient. It will take time."

"I can be very patient," she said, grinning at him.

Patient she was. She leaned over the back of the piano, watching him carefully as he worked. He was gentle, so incredibly gentle as he turned the bolt that held the string, pausing every so often to press against the key before he would shake his head, giving the bolt another half turn.

"Who taught you to tune a piano?" she asked, finding herself absorbed in watching him.

"I taught myself," he answered, never lifting his eyes from the instrument. "It is not such a difficult skill - simply time consuming." He paused, pressing against the key and listening carefully before moving to the next string. "Time is something I have never lacked."

She let her elbow rest on the thin edge of the piano, holding her chin in her hand. "I don't think I could do it."

He glanced up at her, giving her half a smile. "You do not have perfect pitch, Christine. With a pitch pipe and some patience I am sure you could manage."

She watched him work in silence for a long while, tending to each string with just as much careful patience as the last. It was odd, watching him work so delicately. Unlike her, Erik was someone who did lack patience.

Yet watching him with the instrument she never would have guessed that. He did not grow frustrated or careless. Rather he was calmer than she had seen him in a long while.

"Did you grow up in France?" she asked, listening as he pressed against another key.

He glanced up at her and quickly went back to work. "I was born near Rouen -" he said quietly "- in a very small provincial town called Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville."

"Have you ever thought about going back?"

"Only in my nightmares," he answered dryly, pressing against the next key. "Boscherville does not hold many pleasant memories for me."

"Is there anyplace that does?" she asked, biting her lip as she waited for him to snap at her for her questions.

Instead he sighed, giving the tuning key another half turn. "Paris," he answered calmly. "Paris holds my best memories."

"Why is that?" He finally paused in his work, resting his hands against the edge of the piano's lip and leaning forward. "I will not scold you for your questions anymore," he said, looking straight into her eyes. "And I will not avoid them. You seem determined to know me. Just know, Christine, that some questions are better left unanswered." He blinked once, looking back down into the piano. "You. You are the reason that Paris holds fond memories for me."

She worried her lip as she watched him work in silence, punctuated only by the infrequent off-pitch note warbling forth from the piano. He worked slowly, one string at a time, glancing up at her only occasionally as though he were simply waiting for another question.

No questions came, though. Instead she mulled over his words. Perhaps he was right. She wanted to know him, she truly did, but at what expense? What dark things really did lie within him?

"Why did you tell me you were an angel?" The question came forward before she could stop it and his careful fingers froze against the string.

"I never did," he answered on a sigh.

Her brow furrowed in confusion and she stood just a bit taller. "Yes you did, that very first day. You told me that you were an angel."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I didn't, Christine. Perhaps you believe that I did - maybe you have to believe that, but I did not tell you that I was an angel."

The off-pitch key played another time, the note warbling through their conversation and she froze, looking down at her hands.

' _Do not cry,' his voice had seemed to come from everywhere in the tiny chapel, echoing in her head. She could remember it clearly - the power in his voice, the timbre that betrayed his own tears._

 _She had looked up, utterly convinced that such a voice could only come from heaven. 'Who are you?'_

' _A friend,' his sad voice had answered._

' _Are you my angel?'_

 _There had been a long silence. She remembered that well, the deafening sound of silence. She had never realized until that very moment how loud the quiet could be._

' _Please don't leave me, Angel,' she cried into the empty chapel, wiping at her tears._

' _I would never leave you.'  
_  
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "You didn't tell me you were an angel," she breathed, only realizing it for the first time.

He stopped his work, looking up at her. "No, I didn't," he said again. After a long moment he sighed, watching the way her arms tightened around herself as though she were attempting to hold herself together. "But I let you believe that I was. Perhaps that is a greater sin."

She shook her head, pressing her palms against her eyes. "I was so stupid," she breathed.

"Hardly," he said, sitting back on the piano bench as he looked at her. "You were hurting. Do you want to know why I let you believe that I was an angel?"

"I don't know," she answered, dropping her arms to her side as she looked at him. "Do I?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "That is for you to decide. I will be honest with you. You have to decide if you want the truth."

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, staring defiantly into his eyes. "Tell me."

"You were hurting," he said softly. "I was too. Maybe it was wrong - I can admit that it was wrong. I am not a man of great morals. You needed an angel and I could fill that need. I needed a purpose - you could give that to me. You did give that to me. I never had any intention of allowing things to get as twisted as they did - but as so often happens where I am involved, it got out of control. I lost control. I never had intentions of being more than a voice in your dressing room."

She sighed, looking down at the half tuned piano as she slowly twisted her wedding band around her finger. "Did you love me then?"

"I don't think I realized it," he said, tilting his head to the side as he looked at her. "But I did. From the first moment I saw you I loved you."

She nodded, wiping at her eyes with her palms. "After you've tuned the piano do you think we can go for a walk?"

"Of course," he said softly, turning back to his quiet work.


	15. Love is not a symptom of time

By the first morning Erik had managed to capture twelve spiders, only one of which was too unlucky to make it outside. It had crawled over Christine's arm as she sat at the plain wooden kitchen table and before she could stop herself she had shrieked, waving her arm about and squishing it under her foot after she had managed to throw it off.

To her relief Erik had laughed. She rather thought he may have fallen to the floor with force of his uncontrolled chortling had it not been for the glare that she fixed him with. He actually had to turn away from her so that he could reach beneath the edge of his mask and wipe away his tears.

"I'm sorry," he said, making a futile attempt to stem his laughter. "If only you had seen it you would understand."

"Spiders bite, Erik," she huffed. "Would you still laugh if it had bitten me?"

"Of course not," he answered seriously. "But it did not bite you."

She rolled her eyes. "You are sleep deprived."

"Perhaps, though I rather think that is my natural state."

She huffed again, pulling her hair back in frustration. "The market, Erik," she said, attempting to draw his attention back to the matter at hand. "I must go to the market and in order to do that you have to tell me what you want."

He had agreed to her outing far more easily than she expected him to. She had been prepared to argue with him, to remind him that even though he was not a glutton they needed some food and yes, she was perfectly capable of going to the market by herself. Instead he had shrugged one shoulder, dropping a coin purse into her open palm.

"I do not eat for the sport of it," he said. "So long as you bring tea home I will be wholly satisfied."

"You must like something," she argued.

"Nothing in particular comes to mind."

"Erik-"

" _I have no nose_." Had it not been the truth she would have laughed for the serious way he uttered his reminder. "Believe it or not, Christine, a nose is rather vital when one wants to speak of taste."

She stared at him blankly from across the table. "You can't taste?"

"Not too terribly much," he answered. "Smell, too, seems to be a sense that I lack."

"That's dreadful," she said, trying to imagine it. Perhaps it was not his stubbornness that had lended to his emaciated look - she couldn't imagine that eating was too desirable if one couldn't taste.

He shrugged his shoulders. "You hardly even notice it's missing if you've never had it."

When she came back with two boxes it was to a quiet house and the same empty spider webs hanging from the corners of the entryway. She made her way down the narrow hallway and through the last door on the left, dropping the boxes on the counter she had dusted just that morning.

Something seemed off, just the slightest bit to the left of normal. Erik had not greeted her at the doorway; he had not insisted on taking her burden from her arms. It was so very unlike him that she left the boxes abandoned on the counter, making her way slowly through the house.

He was not in the parlor - although he had been, that much was obvious. Spiderwebs no longer clung to the ceiling and the mantle of the fireplace was no longer coated in a thick layer of dust. His cloak lay abandoned over the edge of the loveseat, halfway on the floor and halfway over the arm of the seat.

She made her way quietly up the narrow staircase, peeking first into the music room. It was empty, the lid of the piano was closed and he had draped the heavy sheet back over the instrument - he had done that the night before, insisting that they must protect it until they could get the house truly cleaned.

She crept slowly across the hallway. She would surprise him, catch him off guard. She knew that he wouldn't truly be surprised but perhaps he would pretend, allow her her to have her fun.

When she peeked around the door all thought of scaring him left her.

He lay flat on the bed that was far too small for the both of them, his arm draped over the edge of the mattress. His mask rested on the floor just out of reach of his long fingers that hung so near to the ground, his face pressed into the pillow.

Just to complete the picture, he snored. Loudly.

Christine leaned against the frame of the doorway, watching the way his fingers twitched just the slightest bit, as his thin leg shifted, his ankles crossing.

And so it was she had her answer; even the opera ghost must sleep at some time.

It was an odd thing; the weak, soft feeling that the sight inspired in her. She was half tempted to crawl into bed beside him, to pull him to her, but instead she stood frozen in the doorway. If she touched him he would wake and it was rather obvious that he needed sleep desperately. Still, it was something almost maternal that stirred deep inside of her.

Before she could tempt herself further she was tearing herself away and tiptoeing back down the narrow stairs. She hardly had it in her to wake him, not when he slept so rarely. Instead she found her way to the kitchen, putting her groceries away as best she could. It was a warm morning and she forced the window in the kitchen open, propping it up only the slightest bit. The breeze was soft and cool.

It was something she missed - the simplicity of being able to open a window and allow the outside in. She hadn't even quite realized it until that moment, standing in the kitchen with her eyes pressed closed as the cool air brushed her cheeks so gently. Birds chirped cheerfully from somewhere in the trees and for just a moment in time, as her husband napped upstairs, everything felt so incredibly right.

She heard his footfalls as he made his way down the stairs - that was how she knew that he was already aware of her presence in the house. He was so quiet, her husband. It really was an extra effort that he put forward in an attempt not to startle her.

He did not greet her cheerfully. Instead she caught sight of him rolling his sleeves and straightening his jacket in the hallway. "Those stairs will be the death of me," he muttered grumpily under his breath.

The edge of her lip pulled up into an involuntary smile as she lit the stove and put the kettle on. Surely tea would cheer him up, even just the slightest bit.

He came into the kitchen, sitting at the table and holding his head between his hands, his fingers covering his eyes as though in an attempt to block out the sunlight.

"How are you feeling, Erik?" she finally asked, turning to look at him as the kettle came to a boil.

He shook his head the slightest bit. "My head aches," he said softly.

"Is it the light?"

"No," he answered, lowering his fingers and letting his hands rest against the table. "How was the market?"

The hiss of the kettle was loud and sharp, causing Erik to cringe. Christine pulled it quickly from the stovetop, looking over at him sympathetically as she began to pour the tea. "Busy," she answered slowly. "I have not seen so many people at once in a long time."

She suspected he would have answered her were he not so occupied in attempting to rub at his temple with the tips of his elongated fingers. A headache. She hardly ever knew him to have a headache. She hardly ever knew him to sleep.

She set the tea gingerly in front of him, crouching down at his side. "Are you going to be alright, Erik?"

He nodded slowly, his hands wrapping tightly around the teacup. "Thank you," he murmured.

She watched him as he slowly brought the cup to his lips, taking only half a sip of the hot tea before he set it back on the table. "Maybe you should lay down," she suggested. At his withering look she smiled just the slightest bit, shrugging one shoulder dismissively. "It's always helped when I've had headaches."

"I already did," his voice was nothing more than a whisper now as he stared into his tea. "Sleep is fleeting."

"Maybe you should try again," she did her best to keep her voice gentle and quiet. "How long has it been since you've slept?"

His palm pressed against his temple, his fingers curling over the top of his head as he sighed, sipping at his tea again. "Four days?" he said slowly, sounding unsure himself. "It's not been so very long and we have plenty of work to do. I will be fine, Christine, I just need a little time."

Arguing with Erik was never a wise choice. Not because he was always right, despite the fact that he seemed to believe it. Simply because he was stubborn.

So instead of arguing she slowly stood, moving behind him and hesitantly pressing her hands to his shoulders. He froze under her touch and as she began to dig the heel of her hand into his wiry, stiff muscle he sighed, relaxing under her ministrations. He leaned back in the chair, his eyes pressing closed.

She continued to work at his tense muscles slowly. "Is it helping?"

He nodded just the slightest bit, seeming as though anything more than his slight nod was too much.

"The parlor looks nice," she said softly. "Thank you for getting the spider webs, I never would have been able to reach them."

He hummed in the back of his throat, leaning further into her touch. "I was going to do more," he murmured. "But I was so tired."

She smiled at that. It was, perhaps, the first time she had ever heard him refer to himself in just the way anyone else would. It was the first time he had ever admitted his exhaustion aloud. It seemed such a silly thing to make her happy but it did all the same. "You are tired still," she said softly, kneading his thin shoulders.

His tense sigh was enough to tell her the truth. "I will be fine," he answered. He always had this roundabout way of talking, skirting just along the edges of the weaknesses he still couldn't manage to bring himself to acknowledge. She wasn't sure anymore whether it was himself or her that he was trying to convince.

Either way her hands paused in their work. "What if I lay down with you?"

"No," he said softly, shaking his head. "We have much work to do, Christine."

She worried her lip as she contemplated him. "The spiders will get on just fine without us," she said softly. "And the dust will not go anywhere."

"No," he said again. "It is a sweet offer, Christine, but I will be just fine. You see, I'm already feeling better."

She frowned at his lie, beginning to knead his shoulders just as she had. "Is it because of your mask?" she asked softly.

His sigh was long and deep, his shoulders slumping just the slightest bit. "It is too bright, Christine," he admitted gently.

She contemplated it for a long moment and then her hand was running down his arm, closing over his own hand. "Come with me," she coaxed. When she tugged on his hand he did not argue, leaving his teacup abandoned on the table as he followed her up the stairs and into the bedroom.

He watched her curiously as she stripped the comforter off of the bed, hanging it haphazardly over the curtains that were already pulled tightly closed.

"See?" she murmured, admiring her handiwork. Only a sliver of light made its way into the room. "I can hardly see my own hand. It's plenty dark enough, Erik."

His hands were clammy when she found them in the manufactured darkness, but he did not resist her when she pulled him toward the bed.

And when they finally laid together on the bed he curled against her, letting her pull his head to her breast like a child. Her fingers gently ran through his thin hair and he sighed against her.

He was cold, terribly cold, but they longer they laid there together the warmer he seemed. She had to wonder if he was truly getting warmer or if she was simply adjusting to his cold. Either way, it was not so terribly off putting as she had found it to be in the past.

When he began to snore, quietly, she pulled him just the slightest bit closer wondering how long this simple contentment could last.


	16. Time is a symptom of love

"I am going to my father's grave tonight."

It was the third evening of their stay. The entire morning was spent in a frenzy of cleaning, spurred on by Erik's insistence that he couldn't live in a thick layer of dust. She had, at that point, felt the need to remind him that he lived in a literal cave.

"A clean cave," he retorted seriously.

She made her declaration over dinner, as she cut the bread he had baked earlier in the day, insisting that it would help the house smell less stale. It had worked well enough.

"Of course," he said, looking into his tea. "That is the reason we came here in the first place, Christine."

She chewed her slice of bread thoughtfully as she looked at him, the way he steadfastly avoided her eye and stared so thoroughly into his cup. "I want you to come with me."

That was enough to break his stubborn concentration. He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed confusedly. "Why would you want that?"

"You are my husband," she answered, smiling softly at him. "And I want you to go with me. To stand at my side as my husband; not as some angel, not as a ghost. Just my husband."

So he did. His fingers wrapped tightly around hers as he helped her through the overgrown cemetery. And still, when she knelt at her father's grave, he stood back and allowed her the privacy she so desperately needed.

It wasn't until they were back home and she had let her hair down and pulled on her night shift that she realized how at peace she felt.

She found him where he sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. "Come to bed, Erik," she said softly.

When he turned to look at her his eyes lingered on her just a bit longer than was comfortable; first on her face and then sliding down to the curve of her hips before they dropped to the table almost as though he were ashamed with himself. "I'll be in in a bit," he murmured.

She made her way to his side, kneeling on the ground beside his chair and looking up at him with a gentle smile. "Come now," she said softly. "You are tired, Erik. Come to bed."

His head shook slowly as his eyes focused just a bit too hard on the table. "You do not need to worry for me. I am perfectly capable of caring for myself."

"It's my job to worry," she retorted, forcing herself to keep the smile that she had plastered across her face. "I am your wife."

"You are not a wife!" he growled suddenly, pulling away from her as he jumped up and backed away, making an effort to collect himself. "You are not a wife," he was calmer now, the only tension that remained was that in his shoulders. "You play at being a wife, Christine. When things are sweet, when they are good, when you can care for me like some nursemaid. And I am happy - I am perfectly content just like that. Don't let me dream of more, don't you dare let me."

"That isn't fair, Erik," her voice was far calmer than she felt. She suddenly understood how it was that his anger was able to focus so clearly into his voice; that dangerous, calm, razor-sharp tone that it settled into. "That isn't fair and you know it."

He shook his head, first taking one step backwards and then two. "It isn't your fault," he breathed, looking down at her where she still knelt upon the ground. Then, slowly, he was sinking to his knees too, moving toward her in half-time. "It isn't your fault," he repeated in a breathy way.

He stopped just short of her, his fingertips stretching toward her. She flinched away from him when they brushed against her cheek. Instead of pulling away he moved just the slightest bit faster, holding her jaw tightly between his the tips of his fingers as he forced her face toward him.

"Look at me, Christine," he whispered. There was no anger in his voice, only a deep despair and desperation - something that reflected clearly in his eyes. "Look at me and tell me that you could ever be a wife to me. How could you? How could anyone? Oh, you try, Christine, and for that you are sweet, and perfect. You can hardly look beneath my mask without shuddering - you try, you try to hide it but you can't. I see it. How can anyone be expected to be a wife to a monster like me?"

The tears that came were completely unwelcome. She hardly even realized that she was crying until she tried to swallow around the tight lump that had lodged itself in her throat.

"Don't cry," he whispered. His grip was loosening, his thumb brushing her tears away gently. "Please don't cry," and it was a desperate sort of way that he breathed his plea. "I don't deserve your tears, Christine. I can't bear them."

She swallowed dryly, closing her eyes tightly to his. "What is it that you want, Erik?"

"Exactly what I have," he said softly. "This, you, exactly as you are. I love you, Christine. This is enough for me. It can be. It has to be. This is more than I've ever dreamed, do you understand that? Don't let me - don't let me believe that there can be more. For my sake and yours."

She sucked in a deep breath, forcing her eyes open. He looked so sad, so incredibly sad as he looked into her eyes. Yet still she watched as he forced the corners of his mouth into half a smile, hidden just beneath the edges of his mask. She shook her head, looking at him closely. "What is it that you want, Erik?" she repeated slowly.

His next breath was a shuddering, desperate kind of thing as though his lungs had forgotten their function, as if he had to concentrate all of his might on forcing the air through his body. "I am a man, Christine," he admitted breathily. "I have desires like any other man." His hand slid slowly from her jaw, his fingers threading through her hair. "That's all they are, though. Desires. I can be just as happy without them - I know that I can."

She hesitated for a moment, staring back at him, at his terribly sad and frightened eyes. "Physical things," she murmured.

It was not a question but he nodded slowly anyway, his eyes sliding away from hers.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for him, one hand on each of his cheeks. She slid her fingertips under his mask waiting for him to stop her, to shout at her, to become enraged but it never came. All there was was the sound of their breathing - in, out, in, out, in, out - that ragged pattern that reminded her exactly what they were, that cemented his humanity. She pulled it away slowly, staring at him closely.

It was not quite so terrible as she remembered it. Perhaps it was a lack of harsh candle light, or maybe its appearance was aided by the gentle moonlight that filtered through the still open shades. Whatever it was that helped didn't matter so much. There was no disgust as she looked at him, no fear, no terror, only an empty, aching sadness. The tips of her fingers brushed over his cheeks and then slowly she was leaning forward, pressing her lips to his.

At first he kissed her back. His lips moved against hers as they shared a breath, his fingers tightened in her hair, and then just as quickly he was pushing her away, standing as his long fingers covered his lips and he turned his back to her.

"Go to bed, Christine," his sentence was a broken thing, the hand at his side twisted into the fabric of his trousers at his hip as though he didn't believe he had enough control over it to allow it to roam free.

"I am your _wife_ ," she breathed, her voice full of fire she didn't even know she possessed.

"Please," he whispered roughly. "Please go to bed, Christine. I will be in in a bit."

She wasn't sure what to think of the tightness in her chest, of the hurt that she felt at his rejection. Whatever it was that she felt made her legs shake as she stood. She stared at his back for a long moment - his tense shoulders, the way he refused to so much as glance toward her - and then she was making her way out of the room and up the stairs, refusing just as steadily to look back at him.

She crawled silently between the cold sheets of their bed but she did not sleep. Instead she stared up at the ceiling, wondering what to make of it all. Was she not a wife? Had she not done her best to be a good wife to him? She wanted to sleep but it evaded her.

She wasn't sure how long she lay alone there in the darkness before she heard the door creak open. She was half tempted to pretend that she was asleep simply to avoid him. Instead she rolled onto her side, looking toward him where he stood just in the center of the room. She could hardly make him out, his silhouette only just outlined in the faint moonlight that filtered around the edges of the curtain.

"Christine?" he said softly.

She wouldn't answer him. She refused to. Instead she simply continued to stare in his direction.

He moved so cautiously, sitting just on the edge of the bed with a shuddering sigh. "I'm sorry," he whispered to her. "You are a good wife, Christine. You are a good wife and I am a selfish, manipulative man."

He sighed, looking at her carefully in the darkness. "I know that you are awake," he said with a half hearted smile. "You never were very good at pretending to sleep."

She stubbornly burrowed into her pillow, wrapping her arms tightly around it.

"I've hurt your feelings," he said softly. When his hand found her cheek in the darkness she didn't pull away. "I'm sorry," he repeated in that same desperate kind of way.

"I am a good wife," she whispered, her voice strained and tight.

"You are," he agreed gently, his thumb brushing over her cheek.

Her hand found his, holding it tight against her cheek as she took a shaky breath. "I don't know what I'm doing either, Erik," she admitted quietly. "I am just as lost as you in this - sometimes I don't think you realize that. I don't know how to be a wife anymore than you do a husband. But I try; I want to be a good wife. I want you to be happy - I want both of us to be happy."

His thumb stroked over her cheek and when he bent toward her she held her breath as his lips pressed so gently to her forehead. He nodded slowly, his hand trailing down the side of her throat. "You can tell me to stop," he whispered roughly. "Say the word."

"I am your wife," she repeated for what felt to be the hundredth time.

Despite the fact that her voice shook he nodded, standing and peeling back the sheets of the bed with trembling fingers. His fingers trembled even as they brushed over her nightgown, lower and lower until he found her skin.

Long, cool, elegant fingers brushed over hips and thighs, cold lips following in their wake until she shivered, grasping for him, begging for something to hold onto.

Her fingers found scars - raised edges engraved into skin that was cold to her touch, sinewy muscles that were so oddly elegant in their composition, warm breath against her throat as she gasped and clung to him in the wreckage that they left behind. When she closed her eyes she didn't imagine warm hands, she didn't imagine her gentle Raoul. Even when she had tried to summon the image she couldn't find it - all she could find was him. She could feel him - his music, his passion, his loneliness all entwining with her very soul; leaving her dizzy, clutching him so tightly against her as they rocked their way through uncharted seas.

When it was over, when he collapsed beside her with a shuddering breath, she clung to him tightly. There was no room left for shyness in the skin pressed tightly to skin, no fear as she pressed herself against his cool side, as her leg wrapped around his in a desperate attempt to hold on to that closeness.

And for the first time when his breathy whisper came with the accompaniment of his tears she almost found herself returning the words.

"I love you, Christine. I love you so much." His fingers threaded through her hair, pulling her tightly against him with the aid of his loving caresses.

She wanted to open that moment up and live in it forever - in their quiet contentedness, in his spent passion and loving caress, in the way that his fingers brushed over her skin in a silent apology, his lips brushing against her forehead as he murmured his love to her.

Despite her temptations she said nothing; she simply pulled herself tight against him, pressing her ear to his chest and listening to the steady beating of his heart as she hoped that he could understand the unspoken words that hung heavily between them.


	17. It pulls me, just like you do

When Christine woke it was alone.

Sunlight filled the room, leaving it far too bright for her sensitive eyes. She burrowed into her pillow for a moment, only a moment, and that was as long as it took for the realization of some terrible wrongness to hit.

She woke alone.

The sunlight was not so terrible to her eyes when the clench of her heart was far more painful. She squinted as she threw the sheets off of her, grateful that the curtains were still pulled closed. It blocked out at least most of the light.

Erik had hung her dress over the open door of the empty wardrobe - and, as followed, he had hung her chemise and stockings along with it. It seemed even when she was upset with him the smaller, thoughtful things that he did would quell it.

She sighed, pulling her chemise over her head and pulling her dress down, laying it across the end of the bed as she worked to open all of the ties.

In that moment she wished that she had thought to bring her dressing gown. It would be so much easier, so much faster, to simply throw it over her shoulders and go to find him, something that suddenly seemed so incredibly important.

The house was still and quiet. She had yet to hear the piano since the night that he had tuned it at her request and that, too, made her sad. There was something in her that craved his music; such an absence of it had been affecting her. She would ask him to play when she found him, he simply needed to know that she was fine with him touching the instrument. That was what seemed most logical.

He was easy to find, leaning over the counter in the kitchen and staring at the kettle as though he could force it to boil simply with the heat of his eyes. She stood in the doorway for a long while, simply watching him as she tried to decipher his mood.

It seemed that no matter how long she stayed with him, how close she became with him, she would never quite reach the point of knowing him completely. His shoulders were always tense, he was always quiet, his mask always hid him from her. He would forever remain an unreadable enigma.

The kettle let out it's scream and he reached into the cupboard over his head, pulling down two teacups and filling them with the boiling tea without even acknowledging her.

"I am leaving for Paris tonight," he said as he moved the kettle from the hot stove.

"What?"

She could see the breath he took, his lips set even as he carefully stirred a teaspoon of sugar into one of the cups, his shoulders tending as he took one cup in each hand as he turned toward her. "I am leaving tonight for Paris."

"Oh," she said softly, taking the teacup he held out to her. He took great care to avoid brushing his fingers against hers. She tried not to let it bother her too much but it felt like another barb through her aching heart. "Well, I will come with you."

He leaned back against the counter, staring into his tea. "I don't think that's a good idea, Christine."

She set her own cup on the table, finding that her fingers were shaking far too much to hold it safely. "Why not?"

"You want to stay here," he said noncommittally. "I will be gone one week, just a bit longer at the most. I will bring your slippers - and your dressing gown."

"No I don't," she argued, feeling her voice shake. "We've done all that we came to do - we've cleaned the house, I've visited my father's grave, I want to-"

"You want to stay," he said, cutting her off and finally looking up from his cup. "You are... happy here."

"I want to be where you are," she said, nervously rubbing her fingers together. "You are my husband."

"No you don't."

"Yes I do! Erik, I-"

"There is someone else!" he spat the words almost as though they burned him.

She wasn't sure whether her heart was racing or it had stopped. Everything began to move in half-time and his words seemed to have stolen the breath from her lungs. "What?"

"There is someone else," he repeated softly.

She staggered backwards, grateful when her hand found the back of a chair. The scrape of wood against floor echoed in her ears and she sat slowly, staring at him as he fidgeted and avoided her eyes. "That is… well, that's something I never expected to hear from you," her laugh was off even to her own ears, a sharp edge of hysteria creeping in.

"It is nothing to be jealous of," he murmured to his shoes.

"How long?" she whispered, staring down at the table in front of her.

"A very long time." She counted his footsteps in her head - one, two, three, four steps and then the slow drag of a chair across tile. "Perhaps longer than you have been alive."

Tears blurred her vision and she wiped angrily at her eyes. It was anger that she wanted - not this painful, twisting sadness. Weeks ago she would have denied any jealousy - weeks ago she would have hardly believed that Erik, of all people, was even capable of carrying on an affair. Was this jealousy? This painful stab in her chest, the pull of air from her lungs, this terrible dizziness? "Tell me her name."

"Christine-"

"Tell me her name!" she shouted angrily, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes in an attempt to still her suddenly spinning world. "You owe me that much, Erik."

"Morphine," he answered on a breath, the word crumbling from his lips. "I had thought, when we first came, that it wouldn't be for so very long, that a few days would not be so terrible. I was wrong and I must go to Paris, Christine."

"Morphine," she repeated slowly. Was it wrong that the revelation brought relief along with it? Surely she shouldn't be glad to learn that her husband was using. Yet, given the choice, morphine was the answer that stilled her crumbling world.

He nodded at that, sighing. "The headaches have been terrible and I - I have not been myself, Christine. It will help - when I return all will be exactly as it should."

"So last night-"

"Last night was a mistake," he said quickly, looking seriously at her from across the table. "And it shan't be repeated."

If she thought relief was coming she had been wrong - how easily he could twist that barb that he had lodged in her chest. How easily he could tear her apart with only a few words - she was suddenly grateful that she hadn't repeated his murmurings of love to him only hours ago. "You think it was a mistake?"

"It was -" he said softly, his eyes sad as he looked at her "- and I am sorry, Christine. I am truly sorry."

She stood so quickly that the chair toppled out from beneath her, clattering to the floor. "A mistake," she said breathlessly, stepping backwards and pushing the chair aside with her heel. "You are the most self-centered, egotistical man I have ever met."

He was frozen in place, his eyes following her as she came closer and closer. When her fingers found his mask he couldn't even seem to bring himself to stop her - not even as it clattered loudly to the floor between them. He stared up at her carefully - watching, waiting.

"It isn't your face," she said, placing one palm on each of his cheeks. "At first I thought that it could be, but it isn't, Erik. It isn't your face. It's your attitude. You are stuck so deeply in your self pity that you can't even see past your own proverbial nose."

Here, in the daylight, even his face was not so terrible. His skin held a slightly yellow hue, something akin to jaundice, and yet, if only he had a nose she would hardly have thought twice about it.

Once upon a time she would have been afraid to speak to him in the manner she was - once she would have been grateful for his quiet rejection. Once had passed, though, and at the moment she wanted nothing more than to slap him. "I have to wonder how much of it has been in your head," she continued softly. "I have to wonder how many people have tried to get through to you, have tried to help you, that you couldn't see. That you can't see. You can hardly see me. I have tried, Erik, I have tried so damn hard and you don't see it. Have you even for a moment wondered what all of this has done to me?"

His fingers trembled as he slowly lifted them. His palm rested upon her cheek, his shaking thumb wiping away her tears. "I didn't -" he whispered on a shaky voice. "I… I am truly sorry, Christine."

"Stop apologising!" she exclaimed, finding that she was incapable of stopping herself. "For God's sake, Erik, stop apologizing to me."

"If I cannot apologize -" he said slowly, his eyes searching hers "- then what am I to do?"

"You know what to do, Erik. You are simply too afraid to do it."

It was amazing how easy it was to watch his thoughts through his eyes. The way that they muddled and slowly became clear, the way that he stared at her so completely, the softness that slowly found its way into them. His second hand joined his first on her cheek, his thumbs shaking as he brushed away the remnants of her tears.

When his lips finally found hers she sighed, the tenseness snapping as relief flooded through her.

At her second wave of tears his hand found the back of her head, stroking her hair gently. "Come here," he murmured, his voice soft and warm.

She obeyed his silent command, gave in to his gentle tug. He pulled her into his lap, his fingers threading through her hair as he rocked her like a child, pressing his lips to her forehead.

"I can't get out," he whispered after a long moment. His long, cold fingers trailed along her temple, pushing her hair back. "You don't understand - you don't know what I am, Christine. The things that I have done… You have seen it in glimpses, this terrible thing that lives in me, but you haven't the slightest idea."

She pressed her forehead to his throat as his hand absently stroked her arm.

"I thought that it would be easy," he confessed slowly. "That if I had you as a wife I could do anything - I would be happy, it wouldn't - wouldn't haunt me anymore. It haunts me, Christine. Everything. Everytime I close my eyes I see… I see that night, the hatred in your eyes, the blood," his fingers brushed through her hair. "I remember that, even if not now, there was a time that you would have rather died than let me touch you. I can't shake the feeling that it still lives in you."

She sighed, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as she pulled herself closer to him. That feeling was back - the warmth, the closeness, the desire to burrow into everything he was and never let go. "We both made terrible mistakes," she said softly. "Do we deserve to punish ourselves for them forever?"

"What if _I_ was the mistake?" his question was soft and broken, his fingers tightening in her hair in direct contradiction to his desperate question.

She pulled back just the slightest bit, looking into his desperate eyes, that broken piece of his soul that he allowed her to glimpse to rarely. "Then we start over," she said softly. "We put it right."

His eyes searched hers desperately, begging for some sort of understanding. "I still must go to Paris," he murmured.

"With your wife."


	18. My smoke will push you back

The darkness of their home beneath the opera was strangely welcoming to Christine. It was an odd thought but it was true all the same. She had to wonder if it had always been this way and she had simply been too afraid to see it or if it was something that developed with her prolonged absence from the light.

Erik went in ahead of her, lighting candles as he made his way silently through the house. She pulled the door closed firmly behind her. The click of the lock no longer seemed as ominous as it once had - instead it was comforting. They were safe here, both of them.

By the time she made to follow him it was not difficult to find his path - the flickering candles lead her easily. His cloak laid lazily over his chair in the parlor. That in itself made her smile. He was always so infuriatingly neat and tidy - to see him breaking away from that in the slightest bit was an odd comfort.

She paused in her determined path, taking his cloak and hanging it neatly in the wardrobe that stood in the entryway of his strange home.

She found him in his bedroom, standing beside his macabre coffin while he attempted to roll up his sleeve. His jacket lay abandoned on the floor and his fingers trembled so terribly that he could hardly manage the simple task.

"Erik?" she whispered, leaning against the doorframe as she watched his pitiful attempts.

"Please don't ask it of me," he mumbled, giving up on his pitiful attempt to roll the sleeve in favor of simply pulling it up. "Not now - later, not now."

His arm was thin, so incredibly thin. It matched him well. His skin was pulled taut over veins, scars stretching the length of the brittle looking limb. "Ask what of you?"

"To stop," he said, his voice shaking as he glanced over his shoulder at her. "I haven't the strength to argue over it. Perhaps in an hour. Not now."

She worried her lip as she looked at him, taking a slow step forward. "I won't ask it of you," she said eventually, watching the way that his shoulders sagged as he slowly slipped to his knees and reached up under the coffin. "I don't like it - I don't think it is good for you - but I will not ask you to stop."

He sat upon the floor, his back against the leg of his coffin's stand as he pulled a small wooden box into his lap. He was steadfastly ignoring her as he flipped open the lid of the old box.

His trembling fingers emerged with an empty syringe, his other hand rummaging through until he found a vial. He pulled the thin metal cap off, filling the syringe with a sigh of relief.

Another step, two steps and she knelt in front of him on the floor. His eyes settled on her, hard and guarded. "You should start some tea," he said softly. "I will join you in the kitchen in just a bit - you are more than capable of lighting the samovar."

His weak attempt at a smile made her shiver and she shook her head slowly. "I'm staying here," she argued. "I told you - I told you that I want to know you. I do, Erik. Even - even the parts that I don't like. Even this."

He sighed but didn't argue. Instead he ran his trembling thumb along the crook of his arm, pressing lightly as he dragged it over the mass of mottled veins. When he found what he was looking for he slid the syringe into the tips of his fingers, plunging it firmly into his skin.

She watched as he pressed the plunger down, watched as he seemed to melt into himself. His trembling slowly seized as his head fell back against the coffin.

Blood trickled slowly as he pulled the syringe out but he didn't seem concerned in the slightest. He tossed it lazily back into the box, leaning back as his breathing slowly settled into a languid evenness.

She pulled his jacket to her, rummaging through its pockets until she found his handkerchief and then she was crawling toward him, wiping the blood gently from his terribly scared skin.

He blinked lazily as he watched her with warm, clouded eyes. "Are you taking care of me?" he asked, his voice warm and even, his smile lazy and complaisant.

"Of course I am," she said softly, pressing the handkerchief firmly against the puncture wound he had created. "You are my husband."

"You are too good to me," he murmured, his head falling back against the coffin as he slowly stretched his fingers on his knees.

She stared down at the handkerchief and his terribly thin arm. "What started this, Erik?"

"Persia," he answered easily. He wasn't looking at her anymore - his eyes had settled on some distant thing, some thing that she couldn't see. "Thank the Daroga," he murmured, looking back toward her with that same smile. "He may not have created a monster but he certainly eased it's conscience - opium is a terrible, wonderful thing, you know. A bit too harsh on the throat for my liking. Morphine, though, morphine is just enough and poses no threat to the vocal cords."

"It's certainly not good for you," she said softly, pulling the handkerchief away and staring at the scab that had begun to form.

He shrugged one shoulder. "Half of Paris spends their Saturdays at the apothecary. It is hardly a rare phenomenon."

"It is making you ill, Erik," she whispered, running her thumb over the mass of engorged veins in his arm.

"Without it I am ill," he argued slowly, leaning back as he watched her fingers in their curious exploration.

She didn't bother arguing with him - she could hardly find it in her to argue with him over it. He was so set in his ways that any argument she had would easily be dismissed, thrown away as nothing more than needless concern. Instead she moved closer to him, wrapping his now-bare arm around her shoulder as she leaned against his side, holding his hand tightly in hers.

He buried the lips of his mask in her hair, weakly pulling her closer with his arm as they leaned against the coffin together. "I am dying, Christine," he whispered into her hair, his confession low and quiet.

"We are all dying, Erik," she murmured softly, lacing her fingers through his.

"No," he breathed sadly. "I am _dying_. Slowly, day-by-day, I am dying of a lifetime of self-abuse and neglect. I am dying, Christine, and nothing is going to stop it."

She pulled his arm tighter around her, resting her head on his shoulder. It wasn't anything she hadn't known - she knew that he was at least a decade older than her, perhaps more; it was difficult to tell when she couldn't judge by his face. She knew that his habits were unhealthy. To hear him say it out loud, though, was something else entirely.

"I have never been afraid of death," he said slowly, his thumb tracing the back of her hand gently. "I've come close to it at least a few times over the course of my life and I have never been afraid of it. I've spent so long welcoming it that I don't know what it is to live. I am not afraid to die. It is you that I worry for."

"I don't want to think about that," she confessed, her voice shaking on the words.

His free hand brushed against her cheek, pushing her hair back. "I have been afraid," he said. "I don't want to push you away, Christine, but I have been doing exactly that. It is because I worry for you. Because if you can hold onto some bit of the resentment you've harbored for me then maybe it will not be so terrible."

"I don't resent you, Erik," she said, pulling away as she looked into his eyes. The cloudiness had faded and they were disturbingly clear and serious. "Maybe I did, once, but I haven't for a long while and I have never hated you, much as I've tried to convince myself I have."

"When I am gone-"

"Please don't," she said quickly, cutting him off. "Not right now, Erik. Please. You said that you wanted tea - let's go, let's make some tea."

He obeyed her desperate persuasion, even allowing her to help him up from his place there on the floor. She pulled his bedroom door closed behind them - she could hardly stomach a glimpse of the macabre, mocking coffin through the open doorway. It had always been an unsettling thing but now it was simply too much.

She did brew his tea, just as she had promised, and when she asked him to play for her he had given in easily. His fingers danced furiously over the keys of the piano, lithe and agile and knowing. Watching him she could hardly find it in her to believe those few dark words he had spoken. It was a strange thing to know that she had never actually watched him play before - she so often leaned back against the sofa and pressed her eyes closed.

There was something entrancing in it. The blur of his fingers as they caressed each key, the melodic movement of the thin muscle beneath his shirt. He moved with music - he breathed it and lived it.

He _was_ music. It took her a long while to reach the conclusion but as she watched him there was no other conclusion to draw. He was terrible, burning music and the gentlest of melodies. All of the pain and comfort, love and hate. She had to wonder, now, if he had turned to music or if it had turned to him.

He breathed his passion through the pads of his fingers. Just as she lost herself here, he did too. There was no thought, no second guesses. In this he was free and confident and it bore something deep inside of her.

When he finally did join her in bed that night she was still wide awake. She reached through the darkness until she found him, fingers curling over his thin shoulder as she pulled herself close against him.

He made no argument when her head settled on his chest. Instead he sighed his contentment, those same fingers curling in her hair as he held her. Cold, long, calloused fingers stroked against her bare arm as though he was enthralled by the fact that he was allowed to touch it, as though now that he had learned that the permission was granted he could hardly resist it.

She would gladly live in the moment forever if she could. In the shallow rise and fall of his chest; in his cool, gentle touch. In that simple confidence that had silently been borne into him.

"Erik?" she whispered into the darkness.

"Hm?" he sounded so calm, so at ease in the present.

For a long moment everything felt right. She twisted her fingers in the fabric of his shirt, trying to memorize it. This feeling of _him_. The feeling of his fingers against her arm and in her hair, the feeling of his lips as he gently pressed them to the crown of her head, the sound of each breath he took and each steady beat of his heart.

"What is it, Christine?" he prodded gently.

She thought of all of the things that she had wished to say to her father. The last words she had spoken to him had been _I'll be home before dark._ How she wished it could have been something else - something reassuring, something about how very much he had actually meant to her.

"I love you," she whispered to his chest, her hand tightening its grip of his nightshirt.

His fingers froze against her and she could feel his eyes on her, she could hear the way that his heart had begun to race, the pause of his breath as he attempted to force himself to comprehend her words. Then, as if something had clicked into place, his arm slid around her and he pulled her only closer, his hand tightening in her hair.

"Oh, Christine," he breathed brokenly, his lips brushing against her forehead, his warm breath ghosting over her skin just as softly as his fingertips had. "I love you too."


	19. D'où je suis je sens ton chagrin

_"You love him. You always have. I think I always knew that too. I didn't want to believe it - just like you didn't. Just like you still don't."_

She wasn't sure why it was that Raoul's voice still echoed in her head. Sometimes she wished that she could shut it out, that she could close her eyes and erase it from her memory. It pulled an ache from somewhere deep in her chest to remember those last few words he had spoken to her, to remember that utterly defeated look in his eyes.

 _"Did you ever really love me?"_

It was a taunting sort of thing. At times she found herself doubting it. What if she had never loved him? What if she had been mistaken? Had she really so needlessly and selfishly been the catalyst for the disaster that had fallen on his life?

Those were the questions she dwelled on in her weakest moments, usually brought on by the doubt that lived just under the surface of Erik's eyes. But no, she was quite sure she had loved him. Perhaps not in the same way she loved Erik, but she had certainly loved him. She loved him in the sweetest, most natural way. It was a gentle and childish kind of love.

It was different with Erik, that was all. The love she felt for him was a frightening thing. It hurt and burned and ached so desperately. She had to wonder if Raoul had been right all along - if she always had loved him and simply didn't recognize it for what it was. It was easy enough to mistake, bordering so closely on anger and hatred. Had she always walked so precariously on a razor's edge?

She teetered perilously on the brink of sanity and the only hands that reached out to steady her were those of a corpse; cold and long and calloused.

Raoul's hands had been soft and warm. She missed them sometimes, the feeling of his hands warming hers.

The hands she held now she had to warm. She had to be the strong one. It was something she recognized now. It had never been Erik that held the power in their relationship - it had been her, she had simply been too stupid, or perhaps too naive, to see it. Now, though, she recognized it. She supposed he had realized her discovery - she could see the terror in his eyes sometimes, that very same look he had given her when he took her to say goodbye to Raoul; the realization that he had lost control and was now left to face uncertainty. Erik had never liked uncertainty. There was a method to his madness, a strangely lucid control that he held over the neurotic swings of his temper.

He fabricated his power and wielded it carefully, always with a goal in mind.

Now, though, there was nothing left for him to fight toward. She loved him. She loved him in a way that burned and seared, in a way that made her chest ache. In a way that thoroughly and completely terrified her. Surely such a love wasn't normal, but it was hers all the same and nothing involving Erik ever was normal anyway.

It was the nights that she enjoyed most, the way that he was no longer shy to her touch, the way that he would pull her close and the careful patterns his calloused fingers would trace over the thin layer of her nightgown. The nights were soothing.

She discovered, over the course of only a few weeks, that he, too, chased her nightmares away. Nightmares were never something she had thought herself to be predisposed to, she couldn't remember having quite as many of them before as she had in those few short weeks.

When she woke she could never quite remember them. The only reason she knew that they came at all was the pounding of her heart and her dizzying anxiety. These spells only came on the nights that he didn't come to bed and as silly as it sounded, even to her, she couldn't help but to think that his absence was the cause.

It was on one of those nights that she sought him out, wrapping her dressing gown tightly around herself in a futile attempt to keep the chill at bay.

By the time she found him in the music room even her teeth chattered.

He sat at the piano, silently staring at the keys, his finger running along the edge of the ivory thoughtfully without producing a single sound.

"Erik, it is very late," she said from where she stood by the couch she had so often occupied while he played for her.

She could see his deep breath, the slow nodding of his head. "It is," he agreed gently, never turning to look at her. "You should be asleep."

"You should be too," she answered, watching the slow drag of his finger.

He made no response, continuing in his contemplative silence. She hated it when he was like this, so quiet and thoughtful. She hated not knowing what it was that ran through his head; most of all she hated when he refused to look at her. She never was quite sure what to make of it.

"You haven't come to bed in three nights," she prodded, shifting nervously on her feet.

When he finally did turn his head and fix his gaze on her it was with serious eyes. "Do you honestly love me, Christine?"

"What reason do I have to lie about that?" she sighed. His look never faltered and she shivered, taking two slow steps toward him in an attempt to test his mood. "I meant what I said, Erik. I do love you. I would not be so cruel as to lie about that."

"You love me," he muttered under his breath, his eyes seeming far away as he contemplated it.

"I do," she answered firmly, pulling him away from whatever place his mind had wandered to.

He shook his head slowly, looking back down at the ivory of the piano keys. "Persia," he said slowly, as though the word alone were enough to answer her silent questions. "When I was in Persia, that is when the idea of an angel came to me. They called me the Angel of Death, Christine. You cannot love me."

She shivered at his hollow tone, the way he spoke the words so gently as though if only he said them in just the right way they wouldn't frighten her. "You are not in Persia anymore," she answered, pulling her dressing gown even tighter around herself. "You are in Paris and things… things are different now. You are different now."

"I killed Buquet," he said, looking back over at her. There was a desperation in his eyes that she couldn't quite understand. He spoke his confession plainly, answering the question that she had never dared to ask. "He begged, he plead for his life and I never gave him a fighting chance. Do you know what it is to look into a dying man's eyes? I do not regret it, Christine. In the past there have been… there have been ones that I have regretted. I feel no remorse when I think of him; no pity, no compassion. Am I so very changed?"

She stared back at him, at his desperate and conflicted eyes. "I don't know what you expect me to say," she answered softly.

"I want you to look at me," he prodded in a broken tone. "I want you to look at me. To see what I am, what I have done, and tell me how you could ever honestly love me, why you would ever love me."

"I don't know why, Erik," she said, taking another bold step forward as he stared at her. "And I can hardly answer how. All that I know is that I do - and yes, it terrifies me, it confuses me just as much as it does you - but I love you, Erik. And I want you to come to bed."

He stared down at his hands as though he hardly recognized them. His thumb twitched anxiously as he looked back at her. "I can't."

"Please," she whispered, taking another step and then another.

When she reached for his hand he jerked away from her, standing on the opposite side of the piano bench as though it was enough to keep her at bay. "It is wrong," he whispered.

She watched him as he crumbled to pieces. It had been a long time coming, she supposed. He was never quite the introspective type, never one to stop and contemplate himself. He just did. He lived day by day, choice by choice, never pausing to think about them. He was so used to surviving that she wondered if he had ever given himself a day to live.

She watched as his trembling fingers made a valiant effort to undo the ties of his mask - and then she watched as he gave up in frustration, roughly yanking the whole thing upward with the ties still intact. "Look," he said desperately. He wasn't angry, she recognized that.

"I am looking, Erik," she said, careful to keep her tone gentle and soothing.

"Then what do you see?"

"Fear," she answered slowly, her eyes sweeping over his terrible face in the flickering candlelight. "Desperation. Disbelief. Regret. I see your face, and your love, and your terror. I see a man, Erik, and all the things that one is made of. A man that has had a very difficult life and doesn't know how to accept it when he does have the things he wants."

"And you love me," he whispered.

"And I love you," she answered softly. She stepped around the piano bench and though he still would not allow her to take his hand he made no argument when she wrapped her arms around his middle, pressing her face into his chest.

He was stiff in her arms but eventually he sighed, his tension slipping away and his hand threading through her hair as he was so often wont to do. "I can't understand-"

"I know," she said softly, cutting him off as she tightened her hold of him. "I know and it's alright, Erik."

He stood there silently for a long while, pulling her tightly against him. His long fingers found the base of her neck, soothingly brushing against it as she listened to his breathing - the way that it was slowly becoming calmer, the way he allowed himself to fall into her.

It had never been about her. She realized that now too. The desperate fight to pull her under his spell, the unwavering pursuit that he had taken to. It had never been her that he was after. She believed that he thought it was and she even believed that this desperate love that she had realized lived inside of him too - but it hadn't been about her. It had always been about him; salvation, redemption. She could recognize the cry of his soul, the desperate aching and longing for something normal, for some semblance of humanity.

She spread her palms open on his thin back, feeling the way the muscles of his shoulders shifted as his second arm wrapped around her, pulling her as tightly against him as he could.

He was crying. She couldn't hear it but she could feel it, the drops of moisture that were slowly gathering in her hair. "Tell me about Persia," she said softly.

He shook his head slowly. "You would not still love me," he whispered. "I do not like to think of Persia."

"I will listen," she said, and when he pulled away and looked down at her she offered him a weak smile. "And I do not think I could stop my love for you if I wanted to. You need to tell someone. I will be that someone."

He looked at her carefully, searching her eyes. "Not tonight," he answered slowly, his voice heavy. "One day, perhaps, but not tonight."

When Erik finally relented and joined her in bed she sighed in relief, curling against his side and finally falling into a dreamless sleep.


	20. She said, how will I get along?

Erik insisted that she learn piano.

Christine had grown used to his strange whims over the months that they had spent together. She had grown accustomed to the fancies that came and went, his ever changing obsessions and odd requests. Usually she would indulge him in them.

This time, though, he insisted with just enough force that it tilted her toward defiance.

"I can play a scale just fine," she said in answer to his request, looking back down at the open book in her lap. She wasn't reading it, not really, but sometimes she had to stare at the words and pretend to be occupied by a mundane task to keep herself from going mad.

"A scale is not playing the piano, Christine," he argued.

She watched his feet from over the edge of her book. The tip of his immaculately polished shoe tapped impatiently on the floor and she did her best to ignore him, turning the page despite the fact that she had only read the first paragraph three times.

"Are you listening to me?"

The sharp edge in his voice used to be enough to snap her to attention. It used to be enough to frighten her. Now, though, she recognized it for what it was; nothing more than an empty threat. She turned another page.

She was not particularly surprised when he pulled the book from her hands and snapped it closed. He held it in one hand, staring at her. "You are ignoring me."

"I am not _ignoring_ you," she argued, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared back at him. "And that was incredibly rude - you've made me lose my place."

"Forgive me," he said, his voice dripping with cold sarcasm. "It seems that my mother neglected to teach me my manners."

They stared at each other defiantly for a long while; he was the first to break.

He sighed, running one hand through his hair as he looked at the book in his hand. "You were not reading, Christine," he said softly.

"Yes I was," she argued. She wasn't sure where this streak of opposition came from but the arguments left her lips before she could stop them.

He looked down at the book in his hands, turning it over so that he could look at the cover. "Madame Bovary," he read, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smug smile as he looked back up at her. "I never thought that eroticism was something that interested you so thoroughly. Is it Charles or Leon that interests you? I have always thought that the dull apathy and disregard she holds for her husband was a rather interesting take on modern marriage."

"I haven't read that far," she murmured, feeling the blush rise in her cheeks. Read that far? She had hardly made it past the first paragraph and she hadn't the slightest clue of what hid within its pages. She had selected the novel entirely at random, standing on her toes to knock it off of the highest shelf in an attempt to choose one that she could guarantee she hadn't read before.

"Ah, then you are in for a treat," he said slowly, holding the book back out to her with the tips of his fingers. "Forgive my intrusion - you must tell me what you think when you've finished it."

She took the book from him with a huff, staring down at the cover. "Why piano, Erik?" she finally asked, setting the book aside on the end table.

"It is easier than violin," he answered as though the statement alone was enough to justify his odd request.

"Yes, but why anything?" she clarified, finding herself completely unamused by the way that he skirted around her question. Talking to Erik could be infuriating sometimes. At times she believed that he did it on purpose simply to frustrate her.

"Because every singer should be able to offer their own simple accompaniment," he answered. There was something more there, something dark in his eye, but she refused to question it. Erik could be particularly morbid at times and the last thing she wanted was to have a quiet evening ruined by his aberrant musings on life.

"Fine," she said eventually, throwing her hands up as she stood. "Since it seems you have ruined my novel for me and I have little else to occupy myself with I suppose the piano will be at least a decent substitute."

The smile that he gave her did not nearly reach his eyes - it was cold and humorless. She made no comment on that either.

His piano lessons were startlingly different than their voice lessons had been. He was calm, his voice was even and he did not scold her so coarsely. Instead he stood quietly beside the piano, watching as she fumbled her way through the simple handwritten sheet of music he had placed in front of her.

"My fingers are too short," she sighed in frustration, staring at the page.

"Hardly," he murmured with a warm chuckle, moving slowly toward her. He took her hands in his, massaging each finger gently between his forefinger and thumb. "You simply need to relax. Tenseness will not assist you."

She sighed as his hands slid to her wrists. He positioned each of her fingers carefully over the ivory keys.

"Just like that," he said softly. "Try it again, my Christine."

Though her playing was jerky she managed to stumble her way through the piece and when she looked over at him he had a gentle smile. "It was terrible," she said.

"It was a fine first attempt," he corrected her, leaning against the piano. "With practise I am sure it will come just as naturally as your voice."

She resisted the urge to point out that the very concept of practise implied that it was certainly _not_ a natural talent. Instead she sighed and looked back at the sheet of music. "Why are we really doing this?"

"An instrument is a good skill to have," he answered gently. When she looked up at him he sighed. "You do not wish to hear about it."

"To hear about what, Erik?" she asked, twisting her hands together in her lap as she looked at him carefully, the way he shifted nervously and looked down at the wood of the piano.

"I will not be around forever," he mumbled. "I would hate for you to lose your music too."

"You're right," she said tiredly. "I do not want to hear about it."

He nodded slowly, his hand resting against the edge of the piano. "Right," he said eventually, glancing sadly at her. "As I said, a singer should be able to offer their own simple accompaniment."

There was a shift in the mood of the room, something heavy and truthful weighing down on both of them. Christine's hopes of a quiet and calm evening had been dashed completely with only a few quiet words. Instead her mind was filled with morbid thoughts and the image of Erik laying cold and unmoving in his casket.

When she sat down to dinner that night she stared suspiciously at the glass of red wine that sat beside her plate. It had been a long while since she had seen the innocuous wine and something about it played into her turbulent mood, leaving her completely speechless as she dumbly stared at it.

As if sensing her thoughts, Erik sighed. "It is only wine, Christine," he reassured her quietly. He was so quiet that evening, so calm and timid. That, too, made her nervous. It was so very difficult to tell if something was out of place with him or not.

"Only wine?" she asked, her eyes still trained on the crystal glass with it's thin, elegant stem.

"Only wine," he reiterated patiently.

She looked up at him carefully. "So if I drink it I will not lose the rest of the night?"

"You are not a heavy drinker," he mused, smiling softly at her. "I cannot guarantee it will not make you tired. It serves no alternate purpose. It is only wine."

She was satisfied enough with his answer and raised the glass carefully to her lips, sipping the sweet wine before she sat it back in its place.

They ate mostly in silence. It was the first time she could ever remember actually sharing a meal with him and she was afraid that if she pointed it out he would stop. So instead she ate silently, trying her hardest not to stare at him as he thoughtfully chewed behind his mask.

She was fast asleep by the time he crawled into bed that night. He woke her gently with her whispered name, his fingers darting over her cheek as he brushed back her hair.

Blinking slowly she relaxed into his touch. "Good morning," she mumbled.

"It is not yet morning, sweet girl," he said warmly, his lips brushing first against her forehead and then, so lightly, against the very tip of her nose.

She couldn't much see him in the darkness but she didn't need to - his sweet and warm attitude was a welcome change and she allowed herself to relax under his newly confident touch. "It's not morning?"

"It is very late yet," he answered, pressing a kiss to her cheek, her temple, her heavy eyelids.

She sighed, reaching out blindly in the darkness until finally her fingers found his thin hair. She drew him down to her, pressing her lips to his.

He was silent for a long while, simply staring at her in the darkness as though he were attempting to memorize her face; his cold fingers drew absent lines down her bare arm, leaving a searing line in their wake.

"I love you," she reminded him softly, casting the words into the void of darkness and hoping that he would find them.

His only answer was the press of his lips to her cheek. It was answer enough for her.

"You do not have to ask, Erik," she murmured eventually, warm and complaisant under the calloused pads of his fingers that dared not to tread beyond the skin of her arm. "I am your wife and it was hardly ever a mistake."

Though he sighed his fingers never paused in their determined path. "I do," he mumbled quietly, his words timid and shy.

She blinked up at him. There was something warm in his eyes - something that laid over the smouldering fire of his passion, something gentle and sweet and content. "You do what?"

"Have to ask," he answered softly.

Her hand found his on her arm, her thumb tracing over the back of it as she contemplated him. "Are you happy, Erik?"

"You have made me the happiest man in all of Paris," he answered slowly. "In all the world."

He made love to her that night; slow and gentle and kind. His face pressed against the column of her throat as he whispered his love to her, as he carried her lovingly through the waves of desire and uncertainty.

When it was over he pulled her carefully against him, his fingers languid as they painted careful patterns on the skin of her back.

"I don't want you to leave me." Somehow, here in the darkness, the words were easier to confess. It was easy to pull herself close against him in the wake of his spent passion, to allow her worries to be spoken into life.

He offered her no gentle reassurance, no false promises. Instead he simply pressed his lips to the crown of her head. "I love you," he whispered into her hair.

"I don't know how to be alone," she murmured, laying her arm over his waist.

He hummed from somewhere deep in his chest. "No one ever told you that you have to be alone," he said eventually, the words thoughtful and careful.

"But I will be," she said softly. "I haven't the slightest clue of what I will ever do without you."

His fingers continued in their thoughtful tracing of her skin. "Anything you want," he said eventually, his words thoughtful and slow. "You are young and beautiful, talented and smart. You will be happy, Christine. You may not think it now but I know that you will be. You will be someone's wife one day." His hand brushed her hair back and he pressed his lips carefully to her forehead. "And someone's mother. You will fill the home with light and love and - and music."

"What if I don't want to be someone else's wife?"

"Then you won't," he murmured. "Maybe you will go back to the stage. You will be charitable and kind and warm. Whatever happens, Christine, I know that you will do wonderful things. I know because you are wonderful and stubborn and so full of life."

"I don't want you to go," she murmured again, pulling herself as close to him as she could manage, pressing her ear to his chest and reassuring herself with the staccato rhythm of his heart.

His fingers tangled in her hair. "I am going nowhere tonight," he promised her slowly. "Or even tomorrow. I have some time yet. There is no use in dwelling on the things we have no control over, my sweet Christine."

She did not try to argue with him. Instead she pressed her eyes closed and pulled herself close to his side, memorizing the slow and thoughtful drag of his fingers along her skin.


	21. I hold no grudges, it's my destiny

**A/N: I'm late, I'm late for a very important date! I'm working 12 hour shifts for the next seven days. This will impact uploads. After that all should be back to normal. I'm still catching up on review replies. Thank you all for being patient!**

Scars.

He was made up of them from head to toe. She would have been hard pressed to find a single inch of cool skin that was not mapped with them. They criss-crossed and webbed, deep and long, short and thin.

She traced them with her fingertips in the early morning quiet. Though she could not quite read it, she could feel his life written plainly beneath the pads of her fingers in the braille of his skin.

To her surprise he was receptive to her silent curiosity. He made no argument as the tip of her finger traced one of the raised marks that began at his shoulder and disappeared beneath her own arm.

"Erik?" she whispered as she traced the mark back up to where it began.

"Hm?"

She bit her lip, laying her palm flat against the raised line. "How long have we been married?"

He was silent for a long while and she sighed, her thumb finding a new mark to memorize. This one was short and fat, laying in the space just between his third and fourth rib.

"It doesn't matter, not really," she offered eventually, her fingers walking their way up until they found a single round scar on his shoulder. "I was only curious."

His hand found hers in the darkness, pressing her pointer finger gently into the dimple of the scar. "That one was your boy," he offered quietly, the words accompanied by just the faintest hint of a laugh. "He is a poor marksman."

She wasn't sure whether he meant to inspire sympathy or shock with his quiet statement. She found neither. Perhaps, if this had only been a short month ago, she would have. Now, though, nothing she learned of him could shock her much. "He was a sailor, not a soldier," she murmured.

His hand slipped from hers and his lips pressed thoughtfully into her hair. "It depends on how you choose to count it," he answered.

"What?"

"Our marriage," he answered simply, his eyes trained on her hand as she sought out yet another mark to trace. "If you are to believe the papers then it was two months longer. If it was the Scorpion, it was a few days longer. If it was the night that you signed the papers it has only been nearly eight months."

Eight months. She wasn't sure whether it seemed too long or too short. Her finger found another long, thin scar that stretched along his side and disappeared from her reach behind his back. "What about this one?"

His eyes traced the gentle path her fingers followed. "If I remembered every mark I would have room for nothing else in my head," he answered slowly. "Likely a whip," he added as though it were an afterthought. "Most shaped that way were."

"Show me one that you remember," she murmured softly, glancing up at him.

He hesitated but eventually he relented, his hand covering hers as he drew it down to his side, just over his hip. "I remember this one," he admitted quietly, dragging her fingers slowly along its jagged edge.

"Why?"

"It was the first time I honestly believed I was going to die," he answered, pulling her fingers along it again. "As it turns out, one can lose a remarkable amount of blood without succumbing."

It was a long scar. Unlike the others it had sharp edges, something more akin to tearing than a slice. "What happened?"

"A mugging, believe it or not," he answered with a low laugh. "Or, I suppose it would have been a mugging had I anything to give. It is a funny game in the lower reaches of the streets; men with nothing trying to steal from others with nothing more than the shirts on their backs. I was young and foolish and afraid."

"How old were you?" she asked, tucking her head in the space between his shoulder and throat.

"Honestly? I haven't the slightest idea," he admitted, his free hand pulling her hair back. "Young. Very young."

The prospect of young Erik was an odd one. It was never a thought that had truly crossed her mind but once it was there it was hard to leave behind. He had begun just the same as anyone else; a wriggling, crying, helpless little infant. At some point he hadn't had the scar that she now felt beneath the pads of her fingers. He had been a child once. He had been innocent and naive and afraid just like anyone else. "Did you love her?" she asked, her lips brushing against his shoulder with her question.

"Love who?"

"Your mother," she answered, her fingers still tracing along the jagged scar despite the fact that his hand had slipped away.

He was silent in his thoughtfulness, burying his lips in her hair. "I did," he admitted eventually.

"Even though she was so very cold and cruel?"

"She did the best that she could, I think, considering the circumstances," he said slowly, thoughtfully. "I think - I think that she tried to love me. She may well have found a way to had I been dumb as well as ugly. I terrified her. She hadn't the slightest idea of what to do with someone like me. I can't blame her, not really. Most don't. And I was certainly not the most agreeable child."

Her fingers walked from scar to scar, tracing shapes in the points like constellations in the stars. "Do you think she missed you?"

"No," he sighed, staring up at the dull ceiling. "I daresay she would have been relieved."

She chewed her lip silently as she contemplated him. He was not mad, not really. Once she thought he was - surely only a madman was capable of the atrocities he had committed, of the terrible acts of violence played out by his hand, of the complete lack of compassion that he had seemed to have. He wasn't a madman at all, though. He was just as human as anyone else, just as sane when it came down to it. He was completely capable of rational thoughts; of guilt and regret, compassion and love. It made her terribly sad to think of what could have been had his life only played out slightly differently.

"Imagine it," he murmured thoughtfully, seemingly lost in his own musings. "You've a handsome husband and a fine home, a child on the way. He died, shortly before I was born, but she was hopeful. She still had the child, at least. Imagine it, looking down only to find this face staring back at you. It's a wonder she didn't kill me just then."

"You don't hate her." It wasn't a question, it was a mere observation breathed against the cool skin of his throat.

"I did, for a very long time," he said, looking down at her carefully. "But I am old, Christine, and you have made me soft. She did the very best that she could. She gave me books and music and on holidays, so long as I behaved, she would even bring chocolate home with her from church. When I broke the mirror of her vanity she did not scold me - she picked the glass from my skin and told me a fairytale about monsters that hid in mirrors to frighten naughty children. She tried, Christine, and I cannot hate her so very much for that."

Perspective was an odd thing to have. His thoughtfulness was inspiring and she found herself looking back on her own life - her naivety, her childishness. She did not regret it. There was not much at all that she could honestly admit to regretting. Hurting him, maybe. If she had it all to do over again, knowing what she did now, there were certainly things she would change. She would not have torn his mask away to start with. She would not have whispered the terribly cruel words that she had to Raoul. She would not have been so very afraid. "How old are you?"

His thumb traced along her upper arm, slow and languid. "I may have been able to answer that once," he said slowly. "I haven't the slightest idea, Christine. I've lost many years to opium and morphine; entire chapters of my life have played out in a foggy haze. I am old. Far too old to be a proper husband to you I am sure."

She let two fingers rest against his throat, feeling his slow pulse. "Was there ever someone else?"

"That I loved?" he asked, the words tangible under the tips of her fingers. She nodded against him. "No," he answered softly. "Not that I truly loved."

"Yet you are thinking of someone," she observed thoughtfully. "Will you tell me about her?"

He swallowed, his thumb continuing it's careful tracing of her arm. "A little gypsy girl," he answered far more easily than she had expected him to. "I was very young and so was she. She was a marvelous dancer. I did not love her, it was only infatuation, but I thought that I may have at the time."

She smiled gently. "And you are quite certain that you're not just _infatuated_ with me?"

"Absolutely certain," he answered good naturedly. "I am quite certain that I love you, Christine."

She hummed deep in her throat. "Ah, but can you really be _sure_? How can one _truly_ know?"

He shifted, pulling himself onto his side as he stared at her intensely, his fingers pulling her hair back as he gazed into her eyes. "You have _changed_ me, Christine," he said slowly, his thumb brushing over her cheek. "That is a feat far too big for anything but love. I think, sometimes, that God must not hate me so very much if He led me to you."

"God doesn't hate, Erik. People do."

"Do you think so?" he was looking at her so carefully, searching her face but what for she wasn't quite sure. When she finally nodded, he sighed. "Do you believe in forgiveness, Christine?"

"I do," she answered softly. "I believe in repentance too."

"So you think there is hope - even for someone like me."

"Even for you, Erik," she answered quietly, trying desperately to see him through the darkness.

"I used to not believe that," he said slowly. "But I think - I think that if you could manage to love me then perhaps nothing is truly impossible. Is that foolish?"

"Not at all." There was something in his eyes that she didn't quite recognize, something quiet and thoughtful, subdued and yet so very intense at the same time.

"I have been praying," he whispered his confession as though it would sound absurd if he spoke it any louder. "I haven't prayed since I was a child but lately - lately it has just seemed the thing to do. I feel a fool but still… perhaps there is something to it."

She couldn't help the hope that fluttered in her chest with his quiet confession. "If I could forgive you then I'm sure that God can," she said.

"Do you, Christine?" His question sounded so very important carried on the serious timbre of his voice. "Do you forgive me?"

"I do," she answered just as seriously.

"After all that I've put you through? All of the lies and schemes, all of the horror and threats? You can truly forgive it?"

She found his hand on her cheek, slowly pulling it down until she could press her lips to the center of his cold palm. "I forgive you," she said with as much conviction as she could manage. "I forgive you everything. Do you forgive me?"

"You've nothing to be forgiven for," he answered quietly, pulling her close against him. "I love you, Christine."

"And I love you," she whispered.

His lips pressed to her forehead as he fell into a quiet thoughtfulness. She did not bother to ask what it was that he thought of - she did not ask after the scars that her fingers found on his back or of what it was that he prayed for. She did not recount their sins in her head. Instead she laid silently in his arms, her fingers trailing through the thin hair at the nape of his neck as she realized, for the first time, that maybe this was what happiness was.


	22. Salvation, it's free

In the course of approximately twelve hours Erik grew remarkably ill. He locked himself away in his music room and despite the fact that her fist beat against the door until her knuckles were bruised and bloodied he refused to let her in.

The morning had begun just the same as any other. He had prepared a spread for breakfast that would have rivaled a king's. She wheedled him for bits and pieces of his life that she could stitch together like patchwork in her head. In the evening he sat her at the piano, insisting that she play that same handwritten piece again and again until she could no longer take it.

The next thing she knew she was faced with a locked door and forced to listen to his wheezing breath from behind the barricade of wood.

"Please, stop," his voice was a cracked, weak thing calling out to her between the blows of her fist on the door.

"Not until you let me in," she argued, cradling her bruised knuckles in the palm of her other hand.

He fell silent at that, the only sound coming from behind the door that of his ragged breathing.

She sighed, taking up her relentless knocking against the door. It was panic that spurned her on; mind numbing, irrational panic.

"Christine!" his voice was only just a bit stronger and she had to wonder how much it took out of him to keep it even. "Stop that blasted beating; my head is pounding and you are only making it worse!"

She knocked only twice more before the door rattled in its frame from his own returning blow. One step backward and she waited for the door to swing open, only it never did.

"Erik, please do not do this to me," her voice shook but she couldn't find it in her to care, not really. "You are ill - please, let me in Erik. Let me do - do something!"

The only answer to her desperate pleas was his stubborn silence. She pressed her palms to the door but it did not give in the slightest - she imagined that he must be leaning against it too.

"Please tell me what to do," she whispered seriously.

"Go into my bedroom," he said slowly, his words rough and uneven. "Do you remember where I keep my box?"

"Under… under your bed," she couldn't bring herself to breathe the word coffin. Everything about it was so terribly morbid and even the word alone made her heart race.

"Yes," he answered slowly, pausing as though he had to catch his own thought again. "Under my _bed_. It is tucked up nearly against the wall. The front door is not so very difficult, Christine, three fingers against the left wall. You will find the latch. Take the box and throw the entire thing in the lake. Only be careful as the stone tends to be slippery."

"Your-"

"Morphine, yes!" he growled roughly and impatiently. "Get rid of the damned morphine and do not come back here until it is done!"

She bit her lip, pressing her fingers against the door. "And then you will let me in."

"And then I will consider it."

With that hope she found herself following his instruction, making her way into his bedroom on shaking legs and doing her very best to avoid looking at the black coffin. It was a bed, that's all it was. A bed with high walls and soft cushion.

It took her a long while to find the unpolished wooden box. He had built a shelf into the underbelly of the coffin and it was tucked just against the wall, exactly as he had claimed. Her arms were not quite long enough to make it an easy task and she was forced to climb nearly all the way under the coffin, contorting her arm to an uncomfortable angle to find it.

Her morbid curiosity got the better of her and she flipped the lid of the box open, gazing at its secret contents. Two syringes and four vials; three full of his liquid drug, one half empty. She found herself wondering how often it was that he went to the needle to find his comfort, how long it had been since he had truly gone without it.

She flipped closed the lid of the little wooden box and, with newfound determination, made her way through the house and into the front room.

He was right in the fact that the front door was not so difficult to open. It only took three passes of her fingers along the left wall to find the hidden dimples in the false stone. A gentle press was all it took. She heard the latch as it gave way, the door popping open just the slightest bit as though it were loaded with a spring.

She left it wide open behind her, relying on the faint glow of the candlelight from within the odd home to guide her as she found her way to the murky black waters edge.

She flipped the lid of the box open, setting it beside her feet as she found the first vial, screwing the cap off of the thin glass tube and emptying its contents into the little lake. She tossed the empty vial in, watching it float away. Each vial followed in much the same way - she broke open each seal, emptying them into the water and tossing them away, one by one.

The water splashed loudly when she finally tossed the rough wooden box in. She watched as it slowly sank below the surface, disappearing into the black shadow that filled the echoing caverns. She watched only as long as it took for the water to settle calmly before she turned on her heel, making her way back inside and pulling the door closed tightly behind her.

She made her way slowly back to her post outside of the music room. Her legs did not shake quite so much as they had on the journey that carried her away. There was an odd comfort to be found in his strange request.

"Is it gone?" he murmured quietly as she approached the still-locked door.

"At the bottom of the lake," she answered.

His answer was a sigh that sounded something like relief. "Down with the siren where it belongs."

She laid her fingers against the edges of the door. "Erik, will you please let me in?"

"No."

She couldn't honestly claim that she was surprised by his stubborn refusal - she had expected it completely. That did not change the fact that it was frustrating. She pressed her forehead to the wood of the door and sighed. "I really wish that you would."

There was silence on both sides of the door for a long while and Christine sighed, slipping down and sitting on the floor against the wall, leaning her head back against the smoothly carved stone. "I do not wish for you to see me this way," his feeble answer finally came.

She sighed again, wrapping her arms around her knees as she pulled them to her chest. "I am not leaving this spot until you let me in," she answered calmly. "You will have no choice but to come out eventually, Erik."

His voice carried from somewhere just behind her head - she had to imagine that he sat just on the other side of the door. "Not until I know just how bad it will be."

"How bad what will be?"

"Adjusting," he answered simply.

"Without the morphine," she finished weakly.

"Without the morphine," he confirmed with a sigh. "It is entirely possible, you know, for one to stop. Entirely possible."

It wasn't clear to her whether he was attempting to convince her or himself. She picked at her skirt as she contemplated it. "Why?" she finally asked, chewing on the inside of her lip as she thought. "It is obviously going to make you ill and I - I never asked you to, Erik."

There was silence for a long while. Thick, tense silence that filled the cool air of his home. "You said that you believe in repentance," he said eventually, his words slow and careful.

"I do."

"Consider it a sort of repentance. A change. One is long overdue. I find no comfort in the hours and days that I have lost to it - my mind is muddled, my memory is hazy," he paused with a sigh. "You have forgiven me so many things, my Christine. I must ask you to forgive this one more."

It was a hefty step for him to take on his own and, considering that, she couldn't find it in herself to be angry with him over it. "I will forgive you," she answered quietly. "But you must come out."

"I am a mess already, my Christine."

"I have seen your face and I love you still," she reminded him softly. "It is a good change, Erik, and I am proud of you; truly proud of you. What I see will not change that."

"'O, what a tangled web we weave'," he murmured quietly. "'When first we practise to deceive.'"

"I've heard that before," she said, the words dancing somewhere just at the edges of her memory.

He sighed from behind his barricade of stone and wood. "The sixth canto of Sir Walter Scott's Marmion," he answered slowly, his words sluggish and low. "Each passage just a bit more pompous than the last. Pretentious little prats poets are. Still, it holds true, wouldn't you agree?"

"Erik, open the door," she sighed in answer, resting her chin in her palm.

"No, not just yet."

She sighed again, closing her eyes as she let her head fall back against the cool wall.

"'A garland for the hero's crest, and twined by her he loves the best;'-" he continued in that same manner, the words lazy and pretty in the singsong of his tongue "-'to every lovely lady bright, what can I wish but faithful knight? To every faithful lover too, what can I wish but lady true?'"

The silence between them lay comfortable and heavy, knit like a warm blanket that she dare not peel back. Instead she leaned back, listening to his rhythmic breathing from behind the stone wall. There was something calming in the moment, despite the worry that threatened to spill over.

"I thought that you would be gone, you know," he muttered eventually. "But you weren't. You were still just here."

She turned her head to the side, looking toward the door as she sighed. "What are you talking about, Erik?"

"I left the door open."

"I still haven't the slightest idea what you're on about," she answered.

"I left the door open," he repeated softly. "I came back with a ring and it was closed. I thought that you would certainly be gone but you weren't. You were sleeping soundly. I left it open and you stayed. Why?"

That was all it took to jog the memory. She remembered finding it pushed open, the gaping maw of darkness staring back at her. She clearly remembered the way she had poked her head through the gap, the sudden longing for freedom that had first seemed so lost and then seemed so very tangible at that moment. "I promised that I would stay," she answered eventually. "So I stayed."

"And now you can open the door yourself," he said slowly. "And still you will stay."

"I'm not going anywhere, Erik," she answered softly. "Not without you."

His sigh was a long, deep thing. "I will never understand."

She couldn't help the way that the corners of her mouth pulled into a weak smile at that. "I love you," she reminded him gently.

"That is precisely what I will never understand."


	23. Cracks in the temperature

Erik was utterly miserable.

By the time she managed to convince him to unlock the door his shirt was damp with sweat. He trembled uncontrollably and when she took his hand she found it slick and warm; a truly disheartening thing considering she often found it more apt to compare him to ice than anything else.

She made no mention of his slick palms and trembling fingers. Instead she led him into the kitchen and helped him into a chair, insisting that she was going to make him tea.

Despite the tight clench of his jaw he did his best to portray himself in good spirits. "Tea sounds lovely, Christine," he forced out.

He was lying, of course. Just as she was with her obstinate refusal to acknowledge the fact that anything was different at all. Still, if lies was all it took to hold on to a shred of sanity then so be it.

He grew increasingly agitated as the night wore on. His fingers tapped relentlessly against anything he could find - the edge of the table, the arm of his chair, his own thigh. _Tap_ , _tap_ , _tap_ , they beat out of tempo in a staccato rhythm, something that was nearly enough to drive her to madness. She did her best not to snap at him - not even when he began his nervous pacing in the middle of the night.

Up and down he walked at the edge of the bed, his footsteps unsure and loud in the darkness of the room.

"Erik, you need to lay down," she murmured on his twelfth trip along the side of the bed.

"I cannot sleep," he argued, walking up the length of the room and turning, making his way to the other wall. "A maddening thing - I am tired and I cannot sleep. Truly inconvenient, if you ask me."

"Perhaps if you lay down you will find sleep," she tried, laying back as she listened to his pacing feet - there, the telltale scuff of the sole of his shoe against stone. Thirteen steps from one wall to the other. It was a measurement that she had never thought about before but now it seemed as though she would never forget it.

"I will not _find_ sleep, Christine," he said in frustration.

One, two, three, four steps - ah, there he faltered - five, six, seven.

"To _find_ something, it must be _lost_."

Eight, nine, ten.

"It is not _lost_ , I know very well _where it is_."

Eleven, twelve, thirteen. _Scuff_ , _scuff_. One, two, three.

"I simply cannot use it."

Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

"What time is it?"

She sighed in the darkness. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. "I haven't the slightest idea, Erik. I haven't known the time in nearly eight months."

"Oh," he answered, pausing in his step. She heard the chain of his pocket watch as it tapped against the face of the clock in his trembling fingers. "It is only just after three," he announced as though she had been the one to ask.

 _Scuff, scuff_. One, two, three…. "Erik, please stop," she finally cried in desperation. "You are going to drive me mad."

Four, five, six. "I am more surprised that I haven't already accomplished that."

Seven, eight, nine.

"Then again, maybe I have. One never knows when _they_ are the mad one. Or so I've been told. Nadir always insisted that I was mad - I never agreed. Do you think I am mad, Christine?"

Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. "I think we will both be mad if you do not stop."

 _Scuff, scuff_. "That is hardly an answer."

She huffed, trying desperately to stop counting his footsteps in her head. "I do not think you are _mad_ , Erik," she said eventually, sitting up as she resigned herself to the fact that sleep would not come so long as his irksome pacing continued. "You are certainly not without you eccentricities, but that is hardly madness."

"That is quite possibly the kindest descriptor anyone has ever given me," he murmured as he continued to pace. "Thank you."

She sighed into the darkness. "If you do not try to sleep you will not know if you can or not."

"I have found, through years of intermittent use, that morphine tends to affect sleep most," he said slowly. "The only way to combat it, it seems, is to be sure that you have utterly exhausted yourself."

"So you have quit before."

"Many times, my Christine. Though this seems to be the first time it has been by choice and not simple forgetfulness."

Her eyes followed his shape moving through the darkness. He made an impressive shadow - thin and long, graceful even in his trembling state. It was no wonder he had been taken for a phantom. "Erik?"

"Hmm?"

"Why are you putting yourself through this?" Make no mistake, she did not begrudge him for it. It was not meant to discourage or dissuade. It was simply the question that had been in the back of her mind even as she dumped the glass vials into the dark lake.

He hummed deep in his throat as he made an attempt to collect his reasoning. "Have you ever - bear with me and know that perhaps I am a bit mad despite your vote of confidence - have you ever had a dream that you couldn't quite remember? One that you know that you've had, one that seemed so very real but you cannot quite recall?"

"Of course I have," she answered slowly, trying to piece together why exactly that would make one mad.

"That is how many years of my life have been," he answered, finally breaking his pacing as he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her carefully. "I have never had much in my life worth remembering. Now I do. Does that make any sense at all or am I hopelessly mad?"

"It makes sense," she answered slowly, looking straight back at him. He was surprisingly lucid despite his agitation and the tremble of his fingers.

"It has been far too long since I have seen clearly, Christine," he said slowly. "I think, when I am feeling better, I would like to take you to the opera."

"To the opera," she said flatly, raising one eyebrow as she looked at him.

He nodded slowly. "It is not such a terribly long trip."

"Where on Earth would we sit, Erik?"

"Why, in the best seat in the house," he answered good naturedly. "I have been to the opera many times, Christine. I have found the best seat. You have never seen an opera as I have."

"We can hardly sit in your box," she said slowly.

At that he laughed. "I do not recall ever having actually watched an opera from that box," he admitted. "It is far too close, I think, to truly appreciate the performance."

"Why wouldn't you let them sell it, then?"

His shoulders shrugged in the darkness. "I do many things that do not make sense at the surface. What is a ghost if he does not have demands? Besides, it was dreadfully useful for communication. Madame Giry is a kind, helpful woman, if not a bit mad herself."

She leaned back against the headboard, crossing her arms over her chest as she considered him. "And you honestly think you could bear an entire night of Carlotta's singing?"

He shivered and she couldn't quite tell if it was his self-imposed illness or her question that caused it. "If you were there," he said, the words swallowed by the yawn that took him. "If you were there I could bear it."

"You are exhausted, Erik," she observed, opening her arms as she reached for him. "Please come here and lay with me."

He relented, carelessly kicking his shoes off as he pulled himself onto the mattress. He lay in her arms for only a moment before he sighed. "It is dreadfully warm," he murmured.

Her fingers brushed over his sticky forehead. "Perhaps if you at least took off your jacket it would not be so unbearable."

He sighed but made no movement to actually attempt to remove his jacket. Instead she found herself coaxing him into rolling over and undoing the buttons herself. "Do you know how very kind you are, Christine?" he murmured tiredly.

"I have been told a time or two," she said softly, smiling in the darkness as she pushed the jacket from his shoulders. "You have to help me at least a little bit, Erik."

He sat up weakly, letting her push the jacket off of him. She stole the handkerchief from his pocket before tossing it in the vague direction of his shoes. "No one has ever…"

She pulled him close against her again, using the handkerchief to wipe the sweat gently from his brow. "Has ever what, Erik?" she asked gently.

"Taken care of me," he sighed, relaxing against her as well as he could with the tremor that still took him. "Like you do. No one has ever been… been so kind to me."

How he could still so easily make her heart ache for him. "Then it is a good thing I am here, hmm?"

He nodded weakly against her breast, his arm wrapping over her waist as he yawned again. "I am so very tired, but I will not sleep," he muttered.

She pressed her lips to the top of his head trying not to think too terribly much about how very warm his skin was to her touch. "You should rest anyway," she said softly.

There was a long moment of silence and for just a minute she thought that he had fallen asleep despite his insistence that he would not find it. "Christine?" he breathed quietly into the darkness.

"Hmm?" It was her turn now to hold him close and listen as he breathed his questions to her in the cover of darkness. It was fitting, she thought.

"I will never understand - and I do not want you to try to explain it to me," he murmured quietly. "But thank you for - for staying."

She ran her fingers silently through his dreadfully thin hair. "I am not going anywhere," she said eventually. He hummed in response, shifting against her. "I am dreadfully afraid of heights, Erik," she said, the thought only just occuring to her as she considered what exactly it meant to see an opera with him.

"Doesn't much matter," he mumbled, his words beginning to slur together as he lingered somewhere in that space between asleep and awake. "I'll catch you."

And though she knew that he hadn't the slightest idea what it was he said, or what it was that she was even talking about, she smiled, pressing her lips to his warm forehead again. "Of course you will," she murmured.

Just when she thought he had fallen asleep he sighed again. "It is still terribly warm," he complained.

"You've a fever, Erik," she answered softly, brushing his hair back as she dabbed at his terrible face with the handkerchief again.

He mumbled something that she couldn't quite hear, burrowing against her.

"I wish that I could help," she said in answer to his unheard complaint. "I truly do, Erik."

His breathing settled into evenness, his tremor seeming to abate just the slightest bit and she sighed in relief.

She laid still for a long while as she held him, waiting for him to stir. He lay still, his breathing even, and she finally pressed her own eyes closed.

"Christine?"

"Hm?" she did her best not to allow her irritation to show.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I love you too, darling," she answered, running her fingers through his hair again. It seemed to calm him.

"You have never called me that before," he said slowly.

"Hm?"

"Darling," he answered. "You have never called me darling before."

She was tired, so incredibly tired, and she sighed. "Go to sleep, Erik," she pleaded.

He fell into silence and she continued to drag her fingers gently against his scalp until she fell asleep herself.

When she woke only a few hours later to the scuffing sound of his shoes as he paced quietly along the wall she sighed, rolling over and curling into herself.


	24. I am heavy, but I feel frail

**A/N: It's late but it's here. We will still have a Tuesday update and everything should be getting back to normal now. Sorry I'm late!**

When she woke it was to the smell of baking sweet bread. She wasn't quite sure why it was such an off putting thing until she got her dressing gown wrapped around her shoulders and found her way to the kitchen.

There Erik stood, cracking an egg into a bowl with three loaves already laid upon the countertop to cool.

"Good morning, Christine," he murmured, pouring a careful cup of sugar into the bowl.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Good morning," she echoed, watching as his still trembling fingers closed around the wooden spoon, beginning to stir the mixture.

"Are you hungry?" his voice was surprisingly steady and when he did glance at her it was with a half hearted smile. "There is plenty of bread."

"Right," she said, returning his smile carefully as she took two steps toward him. "Erik?"

"Hmm?" He stirred in determination, pausing only to add flour.

" _Why_ is there so much bread?"

He sighed, setting the bowl on the countertop as he pulled open the door of the oven, peering inside. "It helps," he said slowly. "I cannot play, I cannot draw - my fingers are far too unsteady at the moment. I can bake, though. One does not need steady hands to bake."

His words inspired an odd empathy in her; he was a strong man, that was to be sure. Sometimes she honestly thought that if life were a mere force of willpower she would wake and find him laying beside her with a full face. If it were possible he would find a way - he had, after all, forced even her career to blossom simply on a whim.

She took a few steps forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to his shoulder. "If you insist on baking you could at least make cookies," she teased.

There was a hum from deep in his chest. "Bread is far more practical," he answered, continuing to stir his mixture. She was sure it was as thoroughly smoothed as it would ever be but, much like her, he hadn't the slightest inclination to move. "I will have to get eggs - it seems our supply is dreadfully low - but if it is cookies that you want then I will bake cookies."

She simply sighed, tightening her arms around his waist. "Erik?"

"Hmm?"

"How long will it last?"

It was now his turn to sigh. "I don't know, Christine," he answered honestly, not even needing to ask her to clarify her question. "It could be days - it could be weeks. I have never honestly stopped completely."

"How bad will it get?" she murmured, biting the inside of her lip with her question.

He shook his head slowly. "I've no idea."

She sighed again, releasing her hold on him and moving to stand beside him at the counter, finding a knife and beginning to slice the coolest loaf of bread. "You seem in good spirits today," she commented, focusing on the bread and making a great effort to slice it evenly.

"I've no reason not to be," he answered simply, pouring the batter into the pan.

Christine found her answer far sooner than she wanted to. It was on the fifth day of his self-imposed illness that he did not get out of bed.

It was unlike him but she did her best not to panic too terribly much. Instead she sat herself at the piano, replaying the simple handwritten sheet of music he had handed her over and over again.

It wasn't until her stomach began to grumble with it's hunger that she truly began to worry. She hadn't the slightest idea what time it was - she never did anymore, not in his world - but she did know that he never spent this long in bed. She made a simple lunch for herself from the bread he had baked only days before and a block of cheese that she found tucked away in the cupboard.

Only after she ate did she allow herself to check on him, finding him curled on his side in bed and still tucked beneath the sheets. They were pulled to his chin and still he shivered uncontrollably.

It was a terribly pitiful sight and she sighed, making her way slowly to the bed until she could sit upon the edge of the mattress. She pressed her fingers gently to his forehead only to find that his oddly warm skin had turned to burning sometime in the hours she had been away from him.

He stirred only the slightest bit at her touch, sighing as he moved away from her.

"Please leave me," his words were strained and hiccuping, broken on a dry, fevered throat.

"You are burning up," she answered, biting her lip at the thought.

He gave no reply. She wasn't sure whether that was simply because there was no reply to give or whether he was too exhausted to think.

She did not leave him as he had requested so politely. Instead she clambered into bed beside him, kicking her slippers off and pulling him against her. There was no further argument from him, no resistance as his far too warm cheek came to rest against her breast. There was nothing but a quiet sigh as he came to curl against her, shivering so terribly.

Her fingers ran soothingly through his thin hair, her lips pressed to the top of his head.

She talked to him. If one were to ask her what it was she talked about she wouldn't have the slightest idea. She rambled on quietly, soothingly, if only in an attempt to reassure herself. The silence was far too much to bear and so she filled it with meaningless words. He was ill, so terribly ill. She made an effort to keep the sweat wiped from his brow, to soothe him as the shivers wracked his thin frame.

There was no telling how long they lay there. Minutes melded into hours, seconds seemed to tick by as long as days. Time had no meaning here, not in the eternal night that he had created.

He slipped in and out of lucidness. Occasionally he would give an answer to her half-babbled words that seemed at least mostly coherent; the next moment he would clench his teeth tightly and whimper, his trembling fingers twisting tightly in the fabric of her dress as he pressed his face against her.

When he finally fell into sleep it was no better. There was no relief to be found in his restless slumber. He shivered even in his sleep, he whimpered, she was even sure he had begun to cry at some point. Nightmares plagued him, whispered phrases escaped his malformed lips and she ached, she ached so desperately to take them away, to end his quiet suffering. She would have gladly taken it on herself only to give him a sliver of relief - all of the nightmares, the desperate tremble that took his body, the terrible illness that he had forced onto himself. She would have gladly caught every tear on the tip of her finger and lived it's origin herself if only that would bring him relief.

She had never felt quite as helpless as she did in those hours. Still, she let him sleep. He needed it so desperately, even if it was a restless and nightmare filled sleep.

Every so often she would press her lips to his hot forehead to test his terrible fever. The relief she felt when she found it clammy and cool was palpable. It was only when his fever broke that she allowed herself to close her own eyes, exhaustion sweeping in with the comfort of his cooled body.


	25. Catching our breaths out in the cold

Four days of pacing, three days of a fever that could not be quelled, another two full of agitated pacing and a particularly short Erik.

It was another week before the tremble of his fingers calmed enough to hold a pen and write something halfway legible - not that anything he wrote was ever particularly legible. It was a fact that had always amused Christine - a man as clever as he, a man that could truly be called a genius, one that was self taught and brilliant, and his handwriting was no better than that of a child.

He still had a habit of leaving notes for her when he left; short little things full of reassurances that he would be home for supper, and despite the fact that she had read many of his notes it still took a long minute or two of staring at them before she was able to decipher the shapes of letters from his childish scrawl.

The slight tremble left in the tips of his fingers did not aid her as she quietly attempted to peer at the parchment from over his shoulder. He shifted slightly with a sigh, using his thin arm to obstruct her line of sight only a bit more.

"What are you doing?" he finally asked when he could ignore her no longer.

"Trying to figure out what you are writing," she confessed, doing her best to ignore the warm blush that she could feel spreading over her cheeks.

"Well stop. You are making me nervous," he said, glancing over his shoulder at her. "Honestly, Christine. Did you ever think to ask?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Sometimes it is easier to find the answer for myself."

He rolled his eyes at her, gesturing across the table. "Sit, please, my inquisitive, dramatic wife."

While she could have easily pointed out that between the two of them she was _certainly_ not the dramatic one she bit her tongue instead, following his invitation and sitting across from him. He seemed satisfied enough and returned straight to his writing. "Aren't you going to tell me?"

He glanced up at her briefly with a half-hearted grunt. "Will you be satisfied with my answer or will you continue to peer over my shoulder?"

"And you wonder why I do not ask," she said flatly. She watched as he shook his head, dipping his pen in the inkwell and carefully wiping its edge on the glass neck of the bottle.

"If it were some sort of manifesto I would not be sat in the middle of the kitchen, Christine. It is only a grocery list."

"A… grocery list," she repeated slowly. She wasn't sure why she felt almost disappointed by his mundane answer. It was so breathtakingly _normal_. Maybe that was the reason. It was certainly the reason that her first inclination was to accuse him of lying. A grocery list. "I have never seen you write a grocery list before."

"I have never seen the cupboards so bare before either, yet here we are," he answered, finally looking up at her with half a smile. "Tell me, sweet wife, what was it that you thought I was writing?"

She shrugged, resting her fingers on the edge of the table. "I don't know," she confessed. "Something more than a grocery list."

"Ah," he said, setting his pen aside as he looked over his list. "I am dreadfully sorry to disappoint you but really, I had thought by now you would have realized that at the base of everything I am truly just as mundane as the next."

Mundane. If Erik was anything mundane certainly wasn't it. "Can I see?"

If he had an eyebrow she was certain he would have raised it at her. He slid the parchment across the table anyway, letting her take it from him.

Eggs, flour, sugar. It really was a grocery list. She wasn't sure why the fact surprised her. "What is that?" she asked, pointing to a particularly bad scribble.

"Strawberries," he answered, glancing at the paper. "You do still like them, don't you?"

"I do," she answered, smiling despite herself. What an odd thing to sit across the table from the phantom of the opera and look over a grocery list. The thought didn't come to her often but when it did it was usually amusing. If someone had asked her five years ago where she would be now this certainly wouldn't have been on her list - and yet how right it seemed.

"You know, if anything, you certainly have diversified my shopping," he said warmly.

While he could not she was more than capable of raising her eyebrow at him and she did exactly that. "Is that a complaint?"

"Hardly," he answered, his hand snaking across the table until it found hers. "It is but a mere observation."

"Your fingers are like ice, Erik," she complained, making no move to pull away from him despite her declaration.

His thumb moved up her wrist, brushing over her skin. "Are they?" he asked, something mischievous in his eyes as his fingers began to inch up her arm. "I suppose that means the fever has broken - a jolly good thing too. I was beginning to think it was the end."

She glared at him but he was far too absorbed in watching his fingers on her skin to take much notice. "You are not amusing, Erik. You know I don't like it when you talk that way."

"A choir of angels, my love. I swear I heard it," he said, glancing up at her. "On further thought it may have only been you. Still, it is all the same."

"Has anyone ever told you that you are dreadfully morbid?"

He hummed, finally looking up at her. "Do I _distress_ you?"

"Terribly so," she answered honestly. "It is awfully cruel, Erik."

"We are all going to die one day," he murmured, his cold thumb brushing over her wrist gently. "What is it worth if one cannot have a bit of humor about it all?"

Christine would never be sure which of them was more surprised by her tears. It was entirely silly, she knew, to cry like this - he was only joking, cruel as it could be, and she was more than aware of that but it didn't stop her tears, it didn't stop her hiccups and the knot that formed tightly in her throat. She pulled her hand away from him, making an attempt to cover her eyes, but it was far too late by then. She heard the way his breath caught, she could feel the sudden tension that had found a place in the room.

Stress. It was certainly stress, she thought. As terrible as the few weeks had been for him they weighed heavily on her too. She would not feel guilt over it. She refused to feel guilt over it. His fever had been the worst of it - that terrible, pained whimper that reminded her very much of a dying animal. She _had_ honestly believed it was the end and for him to be so blaise toward the whole thing - no, she would not feel guilt over her touchiness. She would not feel guilt over being raw.

She wasn't sure when he stood but he did all the same, his cold fingers wrapped around her wrists and gently pulled her hands from over her eyes. His thumbs brushed at her tears as he knelt on the ground in front of her. "Shush, Christine, shush," he murmured soothingly. "I am just fine, you see? I am right here, you silly girl, and I am very much alive. Come, come," he pressed her hand to his thin chest, just over his heart. "I am alive, you can feel it. Do not cry, Christine, please. I never could bear your tears."

"You are cruel," she said, sniffling. Despite the ridiculousness of the whole situation she refused to apologize for her tears.

He sighed, his thumbs continuing to brush away her waning tears. "I am horrendously cruel, Christine. I am sorry. I am sorry that I am oafish and brutish and that I speak before I think. I am sorry that still, after all this time, I make you cry. I am deeply sorry for that."

She sniffed again, blinking away the few tears that she could still feel clinging to the edges of her eyes. "It's alright," she said softly, forcing a weak smile to her face. "I am sorry that I am ridiculous and sensitive."

He stood on his knees, pressing his lips to her forehead as best as he could through the awkward cut of his mask. "You are never ridiculous," he said, brushing her hair back. "And you have nothing to apologize for - it is me that needs to apologize, Christine."

She allowed herself to lean forward in his awkward embrace, resting her cheek against his thin shoulder. "Erik?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you really going grocery shopping?"

His laugh was warm, his fingers gentle as they rubbed soothing circles against her shoulders. "In a way," he answered.

"Can I come?"

He hummed thoughtfully, his cold fingers finding the back of her neck. There was something soothing in his icy touch, something that she would never quite be able to place. "Can you be quiet?"

"As a church mouse," she answered, sniffling as she pulled away from him and used her wrist to wipe at her eyes.

"Fetch a cloak," he said with a slow nod. "You can come - it is quite a bit to carry anyway. An extra set of hands would be a great help."

Grocery shopping with Erik was not so much _shopping_ as it was petty theft. It was a fact that she knew going into it. He could hardly walk into a street corner market - she was not quite disillusioned enough to believe that. Still she followed him through the darkened tunnels and up toward the opera.

The dark in their home had come to be soothing for Christine. It was safe and warm - there was a comfort in knowing that the only thing that lurked in the thick blackness was her husband. In the tunnels it was another thing entirely. They were cold, winding, confusing and decidedly dangerous thanks to the very same man that she drew such comfort from.

She felt no qualms about catching his sleeve; she was hardly embarrassed by her fear. There wasn't much that embarrassed her anymore.

He glanced back at her when he felt her tug at his sleeve, pausing to wordlessly take her hand in his. It reminded her remarkably of the very first time he had brought her through the same tunnels, her hand held so carefully in his as he confidently lead the way. Only it was backwards, so very backwards, that instead of leading her _down_ he was leading her _up_. She wasn't sure why that made her anxious but it did all the same.

"Where are we going?"

She wasn't sure whether her voice trembled or whether he had truly come to know her so remarkably well, but his hand squeezed hers reassuringly. "Only to the kitchen."

"You know I do not like the opera at night, Erik."

He stopped in his tracks, causing her to bump into him. " _You_ asked to come, Christine," he pointed out, looking at her carefully through the thick darkness.

"Well, I certainly don't want you to go alone. I do not like not knowing where you are. It is dangerous up there, you know."

He blinked at her in the darkness, sighing. "What have I done to you?" he murmured, sounding truly distressed. "If you are afraid I will take you back. I will not be so very long."

"No," she said quickly, her hand tightening its grip on his. "No, I want to come, Erik. It is only that last time-"

"Last time you were perfectly safe, Christine," he said softly. "Just as you will be this time. Do you think that I would honestly let you come if it posed any danger? You are just as safe here as you are in our home."

Though she was not quite comforted by his reassurance she nodded all the same. "Fine, can we go, Erik? Please. It is cold."

He sighed and though she knew that he did not believe her half-hearted answer he accepted it all the same, his hand shifting it's grip on hers as he led the way.

But, just as he promised, they faced no obstacles in their journey. No one stood in the way, nothing lurked in the shadows - well, nothing more than the two of them, and he seemed fully satisfied with himself as he rooted through the cupboards of the large kitchen.

"You know," he said, pausing as he found whatever it was he looked for and tucked it into the knapsack he had brought along. "When I was haunting I rather enjoyed being as loud as I could. No one ever came but it was fun all the same. I would always leave something or another out of place."

"Why?" she asked, her eyes settling on the door. A bit of cautiousness was never unnecessary, she thought.

"The whispers in the morning, the rumors of the phantom stealing food. ' _It couldn't be the phantom,'_ little Jammes would always say. ' _Ghosts do not eat.'_ Remarkably perceptive little girl she was. I wonder that more did not listen to her."

"You are ridiculous," Christine said, taking the eggs that he handed her carefully.

"Bored, I think, is more the word," he answered flippantly. "Boredom has never boded well for me." He swung a lower cabinet open with the tips of his fingers, humming as he peered inside of it. "What do you think, Christine, red or white?" he asked, emerging with a bottle of wine in each hand.

"I _think_ you should hurry up."

"Of course," he answered, looking between the bottles. "Both it is."

She sighed as he tucked the bottles into his bag. "Are you nearly finished?"

"You should not worry so much, Christine," he said, testing the weight of his bag. "I worry more than enough for the both of us. We are perfectly safe."

She was half tempted to throw one of the eggs he had so carefully handed her at him. It was far too wasteful, though, and she hardly wanted to test the good temper that he had found for himself. " _Erik_ ," she said.

"I am _ready_ , you worrisome girl," he said, lifting his bag and pulling it's strap over his shoulder. "I thought that I was the impatient one."

"You are," she agreed. "Now let's _go_."

He conceded with a warm laugh, following her as she led the way back into the darkened hallways through another of his hidden doors. The three potatoes that he left on the countertop did not escape her notice.


	26. This is a gift, it comes with a price

Christine missed her menses. Or, she was fairly sure she had. It was difficult to know when the best she could do to tell the date was a well-educated guess. It could have been three pm or am, June or December and it all would have been the same to her. Still, she counted the days between the time that she slept and she was certain that her guess was at least mostly accurate.

"What day is it?" she asked her husband from the doorway of his music room.

"Tuesday," he answered, not even looking up from the sheet that he scribbled notes on. "Why?"

"No, Erik, the date."

"November the twenty-eighth. Why?" he finally looked over at her, seeming to sense that something was wrong.

How terribly ironic that the times that she caught his attention so easily were the times that she wanted it the least. "I was only curious." His look was suspicious and she smiled as sweetly as she could despite the dull ache of anxiety that his answer brought. "November. Has it snowed yet? You know how very much I like the Winter."

"I am sure it has," he answered, his attention shifting easily back to the sheet of music on the piano. "I have never understood why. It is a terribly drab season."

"Perhaps I like drab things," she answered, crossing her arms over her chest.

"That would explain many things, my love," he replied as he plucked at a single key on the piano and scribbled a note out on the page. "If you want a calendar you need only ask, you know. It has never been my intention to leave you so thoroughly confused."

"I don't need a calendar and I _certainly_ don't need a clock," she said, leaning against the frame of the door as she watched him compose. "What else would I ask you about?"

"It is remarkably comforting to know that I am at least useful for something," he said dryly, setting the page on the piano stand. "You, too, are useful, you know. Come here silly girl."

Though she really wanted nothing more than to curl up in the middle of their bed and contemplate life she obeyed his beckoning, sitting on the piano bench with a sigh when he stood and pointed at it. "What?"

He pointed at the fresh sheet of music. "Can you read it?"

She blinked at the page. "Of course I can _read_ it, Erik."

"Good," he answered, sounding utterly satisfied with himself. "I have heard you practising, you know. This one is not so very difficult."

Though the last thing on her mind at the moment was the notes on the page she complied with a sigh, plucking the melody with one hand and then adding the bass line. It was easier, she found, to learn it all one hand at a time. It was not so very overwhelming when you could pull the strands apart.

Erik made no complaint for her half-hearted enthusiasm. He made no comment on her far-away thoughts and, when she was able to make it through the piece without stumbling on her third attempt, he did not ask her to play it again.

It was then that she decided her secret was best kept to herself. What use was there in causing him distress? He was already suspicious. There was something almost _sad_ in his eyes that was particularly difficult to bear.

It was the following days that led her to believe that he already knew. He didn't say it, of course, neither of them would bring it up, but his eyes betrayed him. There was something knowing there, something sad mixed with just a touch of fear. She couldn't be sure whether it was really there or whether she was simply paranoid but she liked to think that she knew him well enough by now to recognize the signs.

It was one night after they made love that she was certain that he knew.

He lay quietly beside her, propped up on one elbow as he examined her. He was thoughtful and gentle, his fingers moved slowly over her skin as he stared into her eyes. It was so very unlike him to be so quiet, to not breathe his love, to not pull her tightly against him.

His fingers inched their way to her stomach, his palm lay flat against her abdomen and, finally, he sighed. "Do you know how very much I love you, Christine?"

"I love you too, Erik," she answered, forcing herself to smile at him. She could not see him, not really, but she knew very well that he could see her.

His thumb stroked thoughtfully over her flat stomach. "But do you know how very much?"

"How much?"

Finally he let his head fall, pressing his terrible face into the crook of her neck. "It burns," he whispered. "It aches; I cannot bear the thought of being without you. I think I can blame you very much for the fact that my heart still beats."

She drew his palm to her mouth, pressing her lips to it. "Erik," she said, her throat dry and itchy. She pulled at his fingers, trying, trying so hard to distract herself, to find something else to focus on. Anything else to focus on. "Do you know-"

"I know," he said quickly with a sigh, his long fingers closing tightly over hers. "I know, Christine. Please don't say it."

She swallowed despite her tight throat. "How?"

"There are very few reasons you would care to know the date," he said slowly, drawing their hands down to rest against her chest. "I just - I think it is important, now, that you know how very much I love you. That - that no matter what happens I will be sure that you are taken care of."

She shifted, pulling herself against him and he opened his arms to her easily, pressing his lips to her hair.

"You are so quiet," he murmured, his fingers brushing gently over her cheek. "What are you thinking?"

"Tell me that everything will be alright," she whispered, shaking her head. "Even if it is a lie. I need to hear it."

There was a moment of hesitation, only a moment but it was enough to tie aching knots in her stomach. His cold lips pressed thoughtfully to her forehead, his fingers pulled back her hair, and he sighed. "Everything will be just fine, Christine."

Her laugh was a shaking, breathy thing and it only caused his fingers to tighten in her hair. "Can we pretend, just tonight, that it's true?"

"It _is_ true, you silly girl," he said warmly, his lips pulling into a smile against her forehead. "Everything is going to be just fine."

"How can you say that?" she said quietly, the words hot and straight from her chest. "How can you dare to say that when you are so easy to admit that you will leave? How can everything be fine if you are not there?"

His fingers traced thoughtfully over her back as they so often did and he sighed defeatedly. "You are angry with me."

"Furious," she answered, nuzzling against his thin, uncomfortable chest.

"You have that right, I think," he murmured, his arm resting gently around her waist. "I am fighting, Christine. I have been. You know that I would not willingly go without a fight."

She lay silently in his arms, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear. She tried, she tried very hard, to pretend that the words that he said were not true. To convince herself that he couldn't possibly be at death's door - not when his heart beat so steadily, not when he lungs drew air so easily. Not when he held her in his arms and pressed his lips to her hair, when he was so very much _alive_.

"Tomorrow I will take you to see the snow," he said quietly, his fingers brushing over her arm. "We will find your winter cloak - Sunday walks in the park. What an odd thing to think. Tomorrow. I promise it."

Erik made many promises in their time together, each grander than the last. Sometimes she wondered if he remembered them all, even the ones breathed in quiet desperation in that time before he had shackled her in marriage. Promises of a home above ground, promises of a normal marriage and walks in the park, promises of gentleness and love.

Yet, in some way or another, he had fulfilled them. She could not deny his love and, though sometimes it was fleeting, he was certainly made gentle. They may still live five stories below the crust of the earth but he had offered her sun once. He had handed her a key and a house.

This was his last promise and he kept it. Perhaps it was not what he had imagined when he first promised it. Perhaps he had imagined sunlight and flowers that only bloomed in the early spring but still - it was another promise fulfilled all the same.

It was quiet and comfortable. A midnight walk through a snow filled park. Not even the birds chirped to intrude on their stroll.

They did not speak. There was nothing to say in the quiet, thoughtful moment. Instead she closed her eyes and leaned against his arm, her fingers tightening on his elbow as she allowed herself, for only a moment, to be completely, irrevocably happy.

She felt his eyes when they settled on her every so often, almost as though he only had to reassure himself that she was really still there, and it was a warm sort of feeling. Something gentle and loving with only just a touch of insecurity and she wouldn't have it any other way. It was comfortable.

And if there was just a touch of apprehension in his eyes she did her best to ignore it. She refused to give it any attention, she refused to allow it to intrude on the quiet moment. For just that night she let herself believe him - everything would be just fine.


	27. Crawling flat on broken glass

When Erik died it was with all of the quiet dignity he would have hoped for.

One moment he was there and the next he was gone. He slipped away quietly sometime in the night and Christine couldn't be quite sure when it happened; she could only be sure that it had.

It took her a long moment to realize that he was gone; to recognize the fact that she could no longer hear the staccato rhythm of his heart beneath her ear, to recognize that his fingers lay limp and heavy on her arm instead of trailing over her skin as he had so often been wont to do.

She wasn't sure what to do so for a long while she did nothing - she didn't cry or scream, she didn't shake him and beg for him to wake up. She simply curled closer against his cold body and pressed her eyes closed.

The only comfort she found in the whole thing was to know that he had not died alone - he had died in the most mundane, normal, painless way possible. It was something she had quietly prayed for in secret - he had craved normalcy so desperately and it seemed that at least in death his wish had been granted.

He was not a ghost. He never had been. He had never been an angel or a phantom. He was Erik, only Erik, and just as his heartbeat had once reminded her of the simple fact the lack of it did exactly the same. He was only a man and he had only ever been a man, mortal and fragile as anyone else.

"I love you, you know," she whispered to his silent heart. "I hope that you remembered that, at least."

She couldn't shake the feeling that he had known it was coming. The night before he had crawled into bed rather early - she had not yet been asleep and he had peppered her face with kisses, not leaving a single inch untouched.

"Do you know how very much I love you?" he had asked between his frantic kisses.

"I have an idea," she had replied, laughing as she pulled away from him. "You are absurd, Erik."

He simply sighed, pulling her closer and burying his lips in her hair. "Perhaps," he offered eventually. "Absurd is not always such a bad thing to be, I think."

In the end it was exactly as he would have wished it. He never lost his faculties; he remained sharp and independent to the end. She had been fearful of that all along - Erik was not one that handled weakness well and she couldn't bear the thought of him feeble. It would have made him utterly miserable in every way.

She wasn't sure how long she lay there but by the time she forced herself to rise her muscles were stiff and uncooperative. It was with no particular reason that she rose - only the simple knowledge that she _must_ , and so she did, padding her way to the kitchen just as she did every morning.

There was a heavy chill in the air and she shivered as she lit the candelabra that sat in the middle of the kitchen table. The candles would have to be replaced soon, she thought. They were short, wax clung to the edges of the metal holders and she supposed that, too, would have to be scraped away.

At first she did not notice the folded parchment that sat on the edge of the table. Or, at least, she had not thought anything of it. Erik had grown restless in the last few weeks and it was not rare to find some piece of music or another scattered in a place it hardly belonged. Usually she would gather the sheets together while he was occupied, always making sure that they found their way back to the piano. He never mentioned it and so she didn't either. She was content enough cleaning up after him - it made her feel needed, something that was remarkably fulfilling, even if it only meant keeping his music together.

It wasn't until she sat with her hot tea that she finally folded the edge up, peeking inside of it, and she was surprised to find that instead of a music staff it was a letter.

It was clear to her that he had gone to great effort in an attempt to be sure it was decipherable - the letters were not in the usual scrawl that she found in the notes that he littered around the house. Similar, in a way, it was clear that they were written by the same hand, but this time it seemed calmer. Perhaps that was what it was. It lacked the usual chaos of his impatient fingers.

Her tea was all but forgotten with her intriguing discovery.

She sighed and unfolded the parchment, eager to see what surprises it was that he left her.

"My darling wife,

Before your accusations grow too wild allow me to assure you that I am by no means some spectral being. I do not know when it is that this letter will find you - nor do I know what state you will be in when you read it. I only know that it will find you when it is needed. I know this, silly girl, not because I am some psychic; I know no more of the future than anyone else - I know this only because I will leave this parchment folded on the table every night before I crawl into bed beside you and every morning, when I wake, I will hide it away before I rejoin you. So you see, I am not so very clever after all.

I do not know what it is that occupies you now, as I write this. I can hear you, I think, somewhere in the parlor and you are humming. It is a remarkably soothing thing, you know, when you hum. I wonder if you ever did know how very soothing you were, how calming your presence is. I think you must be aware of it in some way. I wonder if you know how much joy you brought me with such simple things. Mundane to some, perhaps, but I find only more wonder in it every day.

I am not a man that is particularly gifted with words. You know that too, I think. You are always so incredibly patient with me, even when I am short tempered and cruel. Sometimes I wonder that you ever thought _I_ was an angel when surely it was you. There are many things that I never knew quite how to say and so, instead, I left them unsaid. I love you. I have said the words many times but I do not think I ever truly conveyed how deeply I mean them. I love you. I love you still, even as I am dead and cold, I love you and _that_ will never end.

I have always admired your tenacity. You are brave, Christine, far braver than I could ever claim to be. You never feared misspoken words or broken hearts. I envy you for that. I envy you for your simple braveness, for your easy attitude and calm acceptance.

I am dying and still I am afraid to speak. I think, somehow, you may be angry with me for it. I will deserve it, I am sure, but how can I bear to bring it to your attention when you are so simply happy? I hope that you forgive me. You always have, inexplicably, forgiven me. I do not deserve your forgiveness but still you give it freely. I do not deserve your love and your care, and yet I have it. I do not think that you will ever fully comprehend how very much you have been to me, how much you have meant to me, how deeply my love for you runs. You have given me happiness, Christine, and I do hope that you find no regrets. I know you. I know that you will blame yourself, that you will insist that there was something that you could have done. There is nothing. My heart is weak. I have ruined myself with morphine, with exhaustion and an unhealthy life. Even months ago you could not have changed this course.

Look at my incoherent rambling. You will not mind it. You will smile and treasure it as you do all of those sappy little things. I have never understood it - I have never understood you - but there is not a single thing I would change in you.

You will have two callers in the coming days. Everything has been arranged down to the smallest detail. You will not have to worry over flowers or arrangements, you will not have to fret over suits and masks. Perhaps you will be upset with me for this, too, but it has all been done with you in mind.

There is a lawyer, you know. I always had so many secrets I am sure this one will not surprise you. A good man more than satisfied to communicate through written word. Everything I have left on this earth is to be yours - the music, the art, the funds. He knows to expect you. It is not much when it comes down to it but it is all I have left to give.

You will be happy, Christine. Perhaps you don't believe it now but you will be. Independently wealthy, strong, charming in only the most alluring ways, and you are free. You will shape your life around you and I've no doubt that it will be a remarkable one indeed. In death I have given you all that I can - freedom and the means to find the life that you truly deserve. Be selfish, my darling Christine, as you have spent so very long sacrificing yourself. One can only throw themselves upon the blade so many times before it truly begins to ache. I do not want you to ache. I never have.

God willing, you do have an angel to watch over you now.

Yours, inexorably,

Erik"

She read over it two times, three times, before she finally set it aside and sipped at her cold tea. It went cold remarkably fast, as most things did in the cellar, but she did not mind it so much. She never had minded the cold.

She pulled her hair back with a sigh. Cry, she thought, she should cry. She should scream, be torn to pieces. All she felt was numbness. She was not distraught or paniced. Her thoughts did not fly uncontrollably, she did not worry. Everything would be fine.

That was what he had promised her, after all. That everything would be fine, that she needn't worry. He had taken care of everything. He had always taken care of everything. He was thorough and she had no doubt that his arrangements extended far beyond his death.

Erik was funny like that. So put together and detailed, even in the chaos that lived within him. He had been a paradox unto himself, something far too exhausting to pick apart and understand, something far better treasured piece by piece than understood as a whole. She wondered, for a moment, how she would ever get on without his careful, quiet guidance. While he had never been the most principled of men he had certainly made up for it with his ingenuity. There had never been a problem that he was incapable of solving.

The house was quiet, unbearably quiet, and so she found herself sitting on the cellar's floor in front of his lake. At least here the sound of water lapping against stone could distract her, she could listen to the steady drip of moisture that clung to the ceiling of the odd caverns. She could forget, with the quiet sound of water, how very lonely it all felt.

Her first visitor came shortly thereafter, accompanied by the sound of clumsy footsteps given by feet unused to muffling themselves. A voice that she hardly recognized muttered to itself, the light of the intruder's lantern cast odd, long shadows upon the walls of the caverns.

He did not see her huddled on the floor by the lake's side, her knees pulled tightly to her chest. It wasn't until he seemed to notice the crack in the stone that light shone through from the half closed front door that he paused, holding his lantern high as he looked about the shore.

"Madame?" he said slowly when he finally spotted her, stepping forward cautiously as though she were a frightened animal.

Perhaps that should have offended her. Perhaps it would have, once, but at the moment she felt very much like a frightened animal. She remembered him, vaughly. A voice from within the torture chamber, a man that had stalked just at the edge of the shadows searching for her husband. His friend, Erik had called him.

The man knelt before her, setting his lantern carefully beside his knee as he held up a piece of parchment. "This was the last letter," he said slowly. "They come every two days - only it has been three now and another has not come."

"Erik is dead," she answered, her voice cracking from disuse. Oh, how Erik would have scolded her if only he heard her. He would have fetched her tea and honey and insisted that she rest until she was hydrated. Only Erik was dead and now there was no one to scold her. "That is why no letter came."

"I suspected as much," he said, a sad smile coming to his lips. "That is why I'm here."

She fidgeted, pulling at the hem of her dressing gown as she looked at the man that knelt before her carefully. He was old, his eyes were tired and his skin held wrinkles caused by a lifetime of worry and yet, even still, there was something sympathetic there, something kind. Her eyes fell on the parchment in his hand. "Can I see it?"

He looked between her face and the letter and then, slowly, he held it out to her; a sort of peace offering.

It was all symbols, some indigestible language that she wouldn't have understood if she tried. There was something artistic in the foreign alphabet, something sweeping and gentle. She recognized it - there had been a small collection of books in the library that shared the very same letters. It had always intrigued her, the way the letters clung to the left edge of the page instead of the right.

"Farsi," Erik's friend offered softly, seeming to notice the way that her eyebrows drew together as she stared at the page. "A Persian language - he knew many languages. I doubt this was the most remarkable one. When we fled Persia he taught me French, huddled together in cargo ships."

There was something wistful in his tone, colored over a deep regret, and for a moment she wondered if it was her heart that ached or her head.

"He was a cranky old man, even in his youth." His tired lips pulled into a half smile as he seemed to blink away some old memory. "You will not be alone in mourning his death."

"What did he tell you?" she asked tiredly, looking at the the letters she couldn't interpret in an attempt to avoid his eyes. It was all too much, the kindness there, the empathy that she could see plainly written there.

He sighed, rocking back onto the soles of his shoes. "That you would be devastated," he answered softly. "That somehow you loved him - a remarkable thing for him to acknowledge, that anyone could feel anything for him. That you should not be alone, even if you insisted that you wanted to be. He feared that most of all, I think. That you would be alone."

Christine rested her chin on her knees, her arms tight around her legs. "Why did he do this - love me, show me this love, let me love him all just to leave me?"

"Erik never was one who had much foresight. He never thought that you could love him. He was in great pain, Madame, for so long."

He was buried unceremoniously, a coffin dropped into the dirt floors of the fifth cellar. An unmarked hole six feet deeper than the end of the earth, carried with great effort by an old man and his thoughtful servant. It was remarkably fitting, somehow, that this was how it all ended, Christine thought. By the time anyone found him - if anyone ever did - it would be an unremarkable discovery. An old corpse that looked just the same as any other buried deep in the commune's dungeons. Somehow that was comforting in a deeply twisted way. He was safe, much as the thought pained her.

When the kindly man insisted that she come with him she made no argument. She did not shield her eyes against the sun or recoil from the people that brushed past her in the streets, completely unaware of what she had been through.

When her second visitor came, knocking on the door of the man's remarkably ordinary flat, she did not fall into herself. She didn't ask his kind, familiar face how he knew where to find her. She didn't argue when he insisted on sitting beside her in the parlor for long hours, the only sound breaking the loud silence the crackling of the fire. He didn't speak. He didn't attempt to fill the silence with platitudes and reassurances, he didn't stare at her and insist that she spring into life. Instead he clutched his hands together in his lap, his thumbs brushing against each other as he stared into the fire beside her.

There were questions, eventually, questions that she hadn't had the heart or mind to answer. When they ended she was sure it was him that he could thank - Raoul, good, gentle Raoul who even still insisted on being a friend to her. Raoul who seemed to have aged so much in the few short months they had been apart, who seemed oddly thoughtful in her quiet, masked grief.

How quiet it could be, even in the company of more people than she had seen in a year.


	28. You'll have to make sense of my life

"It was dreadfully cruel of you to leave me with so much work," Christine said to the still air around her. She sighed, leaning against the railing of the balcony she had found. "I think, wherever you are now, you must be laughing at me. All of these accounts and aliases. I am still angry with you, you know, terribly angry, but mostly I just miss you."

It was no lie. Erik's life was nothing but a tangled web that was nearly impossible to unravel. It made her head hurt sometimes when she thought too deeply about it.

Seven accounts. That was what she found when Erik's friend had taken her to meet with his lawyer. Seven accounts, each one carrying an alias. What one man had use for seven accounts? Her late husband, apparently.

"No, no, no," the lawyer had said as he spread the paperwork on the table in front of her. " _This_ is the one for the architecture, that one is the one that funnels to charity."

Charity. If she had the energy she would have laughed. It was fitting, somehow, to learn this about him after he was gone.

The way that the lawyer had leaned forward while he told her about them all was a clear indication that there was certainly more illegal about the arrangement than simple embezzlement. Perhaps that would have bothered her once but anymore she was simply happy to have any explanation. If Erik had taught her anything it was that some questions were best left unanswered.

"That one is architecture," she said, pointing at the paperwork. "Then what is this one?"

"Simple savings."

"Which means…?"

The man shrugged his shoulders. "I'm sorry, Madame. I'm afraid I did not know your husband very well. All that I can say is I have only ever seen funds go _into_ that one, never out. There are two like that - this one was only opened a few weeks ago."

It all made her head ache. Sometimes she wondered if that had been his intention; it was certainly a welcome distraction. When she fell into the far-too-soft mattress in the far-too-bright bedroom that she found herself in sleep came easily.

It was only one week after his death that Raoul had renewed his proposal for marriage; she wasn't sure whether she should feel offended or complimented so instead she had smiled stupidly at him, curling her fingers over his knuckles.

"I am mourning a husband," she had reminded him softly. "You do not want to marry me, Raoul. You think that you love me still - you do not know me. I hardly know myself anymore."

He had protested, of course, spouting some weakly poetic thing about love and about how he _certainly_ knew her. She couldn't remember the words. They hardly mattered.

"If you still love me in three months, if you can forgive me in three months, then ask me again."

He would ask again. She had no doubt of that. She had no doubt that he did very much love her. There was no questioning the look in his eye - it reminded her remarkably of one she had seen in her late husband's eye. An odd thing to think, perhaps, but it was undeniably there.

She knew what her answer would be already. There was hardly a choice to be made. What man would want an orphaned widow with a child? Erik had called her brave once. How terribly wrong he had been, she thought. No. She was wholly incapable of being alone. How could she raise a child herself? How could she wake every day without any distraction to keep her from remembering that he was not there? She would marry him.

"You told me to be selfish," she reminded the slowly setting sun.

It was easy enough to deal with his finances. Numbers on paper; it was all so impersonal. The numbers had never meant much to him. No, the finances were hardly an emotional thing. It was going through their home that was truly distressing.

His bedroom was somehow made more morbid without his coffin. The disarrayed sheets of music that littered all of the surfaces in the music room broke her heart. She wondered, for a time, how she had not realized it was coming. He had been so very restless. He was nearly manic in those last few weeks, throwing himself desperately into all of those half-finished projects. This sketch and that piece, no, they _must_ be done now, that is what he had told her when she attempted to pull him away. It was important, terribly important, that they be finished _now_.

"It will all still be there tomorrow, Erik," she reminded him one evening, pulling on his sleeve. She wondered now how she had missed the distress in his eye, the answer that he hadn't dared to give. 'It will be, but will I?'

She hadn't missed it though, not really. She had ignored it. She pretended it away. After all if she didn't _acknowledge_ it then it could hardly be true.

It was an odd thing when she stumbled on the sketchbook full of her likeness. If she held it up to a mirror she would have found it to be entirely accurate. The only thing she wondered was how he made her look so incredibly happy. She recognized her smile, her eyes, but it was like seeing some old friend that she hardly remembered.

The sketches changed as she flipped through the book. The edges of the pages he had torn out still clung to the binding and she had to wonder what _had_ been there. She would never find the answer - there were so many questions that she would never find answers to.

Littered in among the images of her were children. Some of them were perfect little things, some bore his likeness. It was as though he could not decide which was to be and so instead he had explored each one.

She wondered how much it tortured him, knowing, _knowing_ that she was carrying his child. He would have argued it if she said it but he would have been a good father. She was sure of that. He was full of stories and love, strict and gentle in equal turn.

' _There are many things that I never knew quite how to say and so, instead, I left them unsaid.'_

She dug through his drawings; she poured over sketchbooks and canvas searching desperately for some sort of secret, some answer to it all. Some piece of him that she had somehow not known.

The only thing she found was a single sketch that stood out from the rest of them. He made appearances in many of them; the edge of a mask barely visible in the background, a large shadow black as night that loomed ominously over her like some sort of deranged puppetmaster. This one was different. There was no mask. He had made no attempt to soften the lines of his jaw, he had not disguised the morbidness of his missing nose, he had not kindly ignored the stark reality of his ugliness and malformed lips. His eyes, though, his eyes looked so soft, so full of love as they gazed down at her in his arms. Her head was tucked under his chin and his long, bony fingers were curled in her hair, his other hand clutched at her waist.

It was a peaceful sort of thing to find. He _had_ been happy. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could remember that very same look in his eyes.

Suddenly the answers didn't seem to matter so much. The scars on his back that she had never been afforded the opportunity to ask about; the old, deep scar that ran from his right wrist to his elbow that she strongly suspected had been self-inflicted. None of it mattered. It did not matter what Hell he had lived through. It did not matter what pain he had inflicted on her, what it was that first drew him to her. It did not matter because he knew what it was to be happy. He knew what it was to be loved.

And in the end wasn't that what truly mattered?

The first time that she cried for him was on her wedding night.

The wedding was exactly what she had dreamt of since she had been a girl. The flowing white dress that reminded her remarkably of a princess, the fat pink roses that she clutched in her hands, the handsome man that stood across from her and looked at her with such admiration, such love.

It was all disgustingly cheerful. Such things were not meant to be perfect.

She could not tell her warm, handsome husband that she did not cry because it was wrong. She could not tell him that she cried _because_ it was perfect. She couldn't tell him that his warm arms and chest only distressed her more.

She couldn't tell him that she did not cry because he was wrong but instead because he was perfect. She cried because he was soft and warm, his fingers were not calloused when they brushed over her skin, she could feel his nose when he buried his lips in her hair.

She did not cry because she had married him nor did she cry for something he had done. She only cried because he was not Erik.

He was patient and pulled her close, he murmured apologies and pressed his lips to her face and it only distressed her all the more. It was a sort of hysteria, the way that she cried, but he did not question her.

Months of holding onto pain and grief that she could not bring to the surface came pouring out all at once and when it began it was impossible to gain control of again.

For the second time in her life, Christine cried herself to sleep on her wedding night.


	29. One day I will see you again

The night was cool and calming.

Christine spent her evenings on the balcony of the bedroom she shared with her husband, one hand pressed over the swelled flesh of her womb. It was there that she first felt the baby move - and there, too, that she would listen.

Sometimes if she closed her eyes and tilted her head just so the breeze would catch her cheek, brushing over her skin just as gentle and cool as his fingertips had. And sometimes, if she listened in just the right way, she could hear his music carried to her on wind and the rustle of tree limbs.

Raoul had asked her to come in only once - now he would simply fetch her cloak and wrap it around her shoulders before he retreated back inside.

It was a pretty picture when she did look back through the window - her handsome husband lit by the gentle glow of the fire that he sat in front of. He was soft and warm and sweet and everything she had once dreamt of.

When she asked him for staff paper he had not even batted an eye at her request. The very next evening she found a ream of it on the desk in their bedroom, a dip pen and ink well laid carefully beside it.

Some nights she would carry it out to the balcony with her, attempting to transpose the music that played in her mind. It was _his_ music and yet, it was _hers_ , too. The notes were clumsy and unsure but when she would carry the sheet through the house and lay it on the grand piano in the parlor she was usually able to breathe _some_ life into it. It was never quite what she had heard, but it was unquestionably his.

"When did you start composing?" Raoul had asked one night when he followed her into the parlor, leaning against the door frame as she so often had when seeking Erik out.

"I don't," she answered, never even glancing back at him.

Some nights he would sit on the sofa against the wall, listening to her music - to _his_ music. When she would glance over she would find his eyes closed as he leaned back into the sofa as though he would gladly be swallowed by it.

It was wholly endearing.

He was usually fast asleep by the time she crawled into their bed. The movement of the mattress would wake him and he would shift sleepily, pulling her close against him before he would finally settle back into sleep.

Though somewhere deep down she felt like she should feel guilt over Erik's visits to her dreams she never could find it in her to. When she woke she never quite remembered her dreams but his voice echoed in her head. _Charles_. That was the only word she could ever quite recall, the simple name that she had never heard him speak in any meaningful way.

When the doctor insisted on bedrest her husband was completely accommodating, bringing anything she asked and spending long hours at her bedside. He would tell her tales of his time at sea, whisper his love to her. He never did try to keep her in bed when she insisted on treading out to the balcony; instead he would silently slip from the room, allowing her the privacy she so desperately needed.

She was not his. She never had been. It was a sad fact but it was true all the same and he seemed to accept it with the quiet dignity that belonged only to someone of his class.

When she fell into labor Raoul argued with the midwife. "She cannot be in labor," he said in frustration to the kindly woman. "She is only six months along - that is hardly enough time."

"Monsieur, she is at least eight months," the midwife had argued. "And that is being generous - she is likely nine months."

She had watched as silent understanding flickered through his eyes and then, just as suddenly, acceptance.

He did not resent her as she had expected him to. When she christened the child Charles he did not question where the name came from. He did not question the child's high cheekbones and pale skin - he didn't even question the black hair that contradicted so thoroughly with her blond and his brown. He never mentioned Charles' light amber eyes or the musical inclination that he grew into.

If he had ever dared to ask she would have told him the truth - the whole truth. She would not have spared him a single ounce of it. But he never asked; he didn't need to. He knew the truth and it seemed to her that he had accepted it. He accepted the child that was not his just as easily as he accepted the wife that did not belong to him. Sometimes her heart ached for him; for the love that he felt for her, for his easy attitude and simple acceptance, his easy forgiveness. She couldn't help but to think she hardly deserved it, the unconditional, forgiving love that he handed her so freely.

She did love him, though. She loved him in the simplest, easiest way; the kind of love that grew in childhood and blossomed comfortably. It was a safe kind of love but it was love all the same. It was a love that most women would be wholly satisfied with - the only problem was that she wasn't most women and she had known the kind of love that only came about in a century or two.

While she gave him every bit that she could, she couldn't help the fact that her soul belonged to another.

On Sundays she would leave the comfort of their home, travelling across town and to the unremarkable flat she had first been brought to. She would sip tea while she sat across from the man that had known her husband. Sometimes they would talk about nothing - other times they would talk about him. They would share memories, never anything particularly intense, only those short little moments that would allow for a smile. And there, in his quiet flat, sometimes she could close her eyes and see him there with her, so out of place in the ordinary room, scowling at his friend as he insisted that he was _not_ clumsy, thank-you-very-much, and that he had certainly never been _reckless_. There was peace to be found there.

Other nights, she would lose herself in the music. Late at night she would bend over the piano trying desperately to put the melodies that played in her mind onto paper.

Some nights she would lose herself so deeply that it was only the sun peeking through the clouds that reminded her to sleep. Other nights she couldn't find the music in her at all - those nights were the hardest nights.

It was on one of those nights that she crept through her bedroom long after her husband had fallen asleep, opening the drawer of the desk and finding the key that hid all the way in the back.

The trek to the opera house was a long but familiar one. It was peaceful in the cool night. She remembered, once, that she had been afraid of the dark. Nothing lurked in the quiet corners. The dark was familiar and comforting instead of intimidating. She wondered when exactly that change had taken place.

It wasn't often that she visited the winding and confusing lower reaches of the opera. It wasn't often that she went back to the opera at all. There was pain there, judgement and murmurs from those who hadn't forgotten. The judgement didn't bother her, not really. In a way that, too, was comforting. It was a reminder that it all _had_ been real. It was not all some memory dredged together by her fragile mind.

The opera ghost really existed and she loved him.

She had no need for a lantern - she knew the way well enough. One hand trailed the right wall of the hallways, just as Erik had shown her. One hand on the right wall, do not take the first or second turn, _only_ take the third. She had never bothered asking what waited in the first and second turns - she only imagined that it was gruesome and painful. He had plagued the hallways with all manner of traps and tricks and she had no desire to know what they were.

Instead she followed the familiar path. The quiet _drip, drip, drip_ was a clear indication when she found the lake. She took the path along the left edge, leading herself further into the catacombs and away from their home. Twenty-five steps down the hallway, turning left, she found the unremarkable room.

Grey stone walls and dirt floors. It was a quiet, plain, empty room. She sat against the furthest wall. No marker was necessary - she knew exactly where he was, only an arms length away and beneath six feet of dirt.

"Sometimes I think I am mad," she said softly to the silent room, pulling her knees to her chest. "Then I wonder if it matters at all, if I am mad. Do you think it does?"

There was no answer to her question. Silent moments ticked by and eventually she sighed, letting her chin rest against her knees.

"Charles is a good boy. You would have loved him. He is bright and musical and handsome and it seems he hasn't the slightest idea," she murmured, smiling softly to herself. "Every day I look at him and see more of you. Raoul insisted on buying one of those new electric lamps - Charles had it dismantled before the end of the day. He is so curious, you know, and I think he must have gotten that from you. He is truly fearless."

She dragged the toe of her shoe along the edge of his grave thoughtfully.

"I miss you terribly," she confessed. "Every day I wake and I remember - I have to remember that you are gone. You visit me in my dreams and it all seems so incredibly real. It hurts so much, Erik. It's like losing you all over again. And yet, I don't think that I want that to end. The pain - it's a bittersweet sort of thing. I think that you must still be out there. I hear your music, I hear your voice. I know that you are still somewhere out there. I am thoroughly haunted by you."

She leaned back, letting her head fall against the stone wall as she stared up into the darkness.

"You are waiting for me, aren't you? I think that you must be. I know that I will see you again one day, when the time comes. I have to believe that. I have to believe it because I do not think that this grief will ever end. You took a piece of my very soul with you and you will surely have to give it back one day."

"Do you know that we were married less than a year?" she asked thoughtfully, worrying her lip at the thought. "It hardly seems fair that you left me so soon. I loved you - I love you still, even now. Even as I miss you, even as I am angry with you, I love you terribly, so terribly. I am happy, though. I think I am, at least. As happy as I can hope to be. I am selfish, so selfish, but that is exactly what you told me to be. Raoul is a good husband. He is sweet and gentle and loving and I am terribly unfair to him. But he makes me happy. I think that you would find comfort in that - do find comfort in that."

"I read Madame Bovary," she said with a wry smile. "You were right - it certainly is an interesting interpretation of modern marriage. I think it's sad, you know, that Emma didn't find the kind of love that I found with you. I think - I think that if she did then perhaps she may have been redeemable."

"I do not know if I will visit you again," she confessed quietly as she stood. "But it is late. My husband will wake soon. He will worry and wonder where I've gone but he won't ask. I think it's because he knows, deep down. I do not know if I will visit you, but I know that you will visit me and I think that maybe that can be enough."

By the time she crawled into bed beside her husband the sun was breaking over the horizon. She woke him but he only murmured something that she couldn't quite hear softly and opened his arms to her. She silently pressed her lips to his warm forehead, settling in beside him thoughtfully.

"I love you, Raoul," she murmured quietly. There was comfort to be found in the fact that the words were not a lie - she _did_ love him, in her own way, and she _could_ be happy if only she tried hard enough.

He only hummed sleepily in the back of his throat; one of his warm hands brushed her hair back halfheartedly and then he was asleep again, hardly disturbed by her odd hours anymore.

When she closed her own eyes and found herself greeted by Erik, she found no guilt in her heart.

 _ **A/N: Here goes. Each chapter title is composed of a snippet of song lyrics. For those of you that like this sort of thing here is the comprehensive list by chapter:**_

 _ **1\. Tail Lights - Social Repose**_

 _ **2\. Bayonnettes - Shayfer James**_

 _ **3\. Disappear - Motion City Soundtrack**_

 _ **4\. Special Death - Mirah**_

 _ **5\. Heartbeat - James Blunt**_

 _ **6\. Playground - Sia**_

 _ **7\. Home - Ellie Goulding**_

 _ **8\. Goodbye My Lover - James Blunt**_

 _ **9\. Be Good To Me - Sia**_

 _ **10\. Almost Human - Aurelio Voltaire**_

 _ **11\. Artichoke - Zoe Boekbinder**_

 _ **12\. Life Is Beautiful - Shayfer James**_

 _ **13\. The Void - IAMX**_

 _ **14\. Little Dreams - Ellie Goulding**_

 _ **15. & 16\. Time, As a Symptom - Joanna Newsome**_

 _ **17\. The Pulls - Steam Powered Giraffe**_

 _ **18\. Light the Match - Mirah**_

 _ **19\. Si tu m'aimes - Lara Fabian**_

 _ **20\. Bayonnettes - Shayfer James**_

 _ **21\. Scars - IAMX**_

 _ **22\. Salvation - The Cranberries**_

 _ **23\. Canvas - Imogen Heap**_

 _ **24\. Eyesore - Maria Mena**_

 _ **25\. Start With Goodbye, Stop With Hello - Eliza Rickman**_

 _ **26\. Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) - Florence and the Machine**_

 _ **27\. Cinnamon Bone - Eliza Rickman**_

 _ **28\. Permission - Sixx:A.M.**_

 _ **29\. Devil Throw Roses - Shayfer James**_

 _ **It's an eclectic mix. Thank you all for sticking with me, even with the sad ending. Thank you to every reviewer and reader. See you next time with something a little happier :)**_


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